Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is working within the Curriculum for Excellence and with specialist services to ensure that young people understand what sexual violence and rape is, and that it is totally unacceptable.

The Health and Wellbeing part of the Curriculum for Excellence includes a section on relationships, sexual health and parenthood. This education starts at an early age, teaching children about what positive relationships and friendships look like, including respect for one’s own body and what behaviour is right and wrong. One strand of this develops into learning that all forms of abuse are wrong and developing the skills to keep oneself safe and seek help if needed. In secondary school this theme further develops into learning what is appropriate sexual behaviour and knowing where to get support and help with situations involving abuse and the laws that protect people from abuse.

We also fund a range of specialist strands of work thorough our £55 million commitment to tackling violence against women, including funding for Rape Crisis Scotland, the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) and Zero Tolerance. Examples of work that have been undertaken include the VRU’s MVP project which takes a creative "bystander" approach to gender violence and bullying prevention and their joint online campaign with Zero Tolerance “He loves me, he loves me not” which raises awareness of teen relationship abuse.

The Scottish Government will also be refreshing Safer Lives: Changed Lives this year, which guides the work of all partners tackling violence against women in Scotland, to ensure it reflects our renewed emphasis on prevention work. This commitment will be reinforced with the introduction of a separate strand of prevention-focused funding to drive forward positive change at a national level over the period 2012-15.

UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Programme is a further tool to promote and advance children’s rights in Scotland and is complementary to Scottish Government wider policy and legislative activity on this issue.

The Scottish Government does not receive reports, nor does it hold information on what reports are made to NHS boards or Area partnership forums, on the incidence of workplace racial discrimination.

The Equal Opportunities PIN Policy sets out boards’ obligations in terms of local policies developed in line with the PIN. Area partnership forums should agree a set of equality objectives, which may include the incidence of workplace racial discrimination, and should receive reports on the outcomes. Individual NHS boards may therefore have information on local incidents.

The overarching objective of the Scottish Government is to promote economic growth across the whole of Scotland and for the benefit of all. Over £216 million has been directly invested in Regeneration activity since 2007 to regenerate communities across Scotland.

There is no specific funding available for the regeneration of seaside towns as tourism destinations, although we recognise they are an important asset for Scottish tourism. However, the Coastal Communities Fund aims to support projects in Scotland’s coastal communities that promote sustainable economic growth and jobs in tourism.

In addition to this, VisitScotland supports local initiatives through its Growth fund and provides business support for individual tourism businesses and tourism groups.

Scottish Enterprise also provides support specifically to Edinburgh through the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG). ETAG aims to improve business performance, enhance the visitor experience and strengthen Edinburgh’s position as a world class visitor destination. Portobello is seen as part of the overall Edinburgh tourism product and not as a tourism destination in its own right. Tourism businesses in Portobello are able to benefit from the range of support ETAG offers.

This information is not held centrally.

The Scottish budget faces real and significant long term cuts and tough decisions have had to be made to prioritise spending. The decision to align the funding of trainee educational psychologists with funding for other post-graduate funding programmes reflects this.

Those students who are currently in training will not be affected, this means that there will be new educational psychologists entering the system for the next two years. We will use this time to work to ensure a sustainable approach going forward.

The Scottish Government will continue to support the Workforce Planning Group to consider potential future impact, how we might monitor this and to identify, within the constraints that exist, any action needed to minimise risks.

Number of trained students:

This information is not held centrally.

Currently, in Scotland, the course is set as a two Year Master of Science Degree in Educational Psychology. Course eligibility and criteria is set by the British Physiological Society and the qualification is accredited by them.

Scottish Ministers recognised that the effective project management required clear lines of responsibility in the management and governance of the tram project and the need to distinguish City of Edinburgh Council’s role as project owner and TIE Ltd’s responsibility for delivery, with TS role as principal funder.