Chamber and committees

The warm homes fund will deliver renewable energy and energy-efficient homes in those areas worse affected by fuel poverty. The operational details, including the fuel poverty criteria, are being worked on and will be announced in due course.

As of 10 June 2011, 78 students have submitted applications for support after the closing date for courses starting in autumn 2010-11, out of over 145,000 applications received. This figure includes applications for 2011-12 session made on the wrong form, applications for ineligible courses and an application from a student who never attended the course for which support was requested.

Fifteen students have so far appealed the decision not to accept a late application for session 2010-11. Four students have subsequently been awarded tuition fee support on medical or compassionate grounds and six appeals are still under consideration.

For 2009-10 session, there were 12 late application appeals of which five were successful.

(a) 142,365 students applied to Students Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) for support in 2009-10.

(b) 145,520 students have so far applied to SAAS for support in 2010-11.

These numbers cover all those who applied for SAAS support and therefore will include a relatively small number of undergraduate students who applied for loan or supplementary grants but not tuition fee support. However, the figures do exclude applications from nursing and midwifery students as SAAS is not responsible for nursing tuition fee payments.

The application session for 2010-11 is not yet complete with students on courses which commenced between April and July 2011 still able to apply for their fees.

The tuition fee deadline was moved from 30 June to 31 March to ensure that eligible applications for tuition fee support are processed in advance of exam diets. Universities and colleges reserve the right to remove access to IT and library services and to withhold exam results for those students who have failed to pay their tuition fees.

Students have a 12 month window in which to apply for tuition fees. Applications for 2010-11 courses starting in the autumn term opened in April 2010 and closed at the end of March 2011. The Students Awards Agency for Scotland is expected to pay tuition fees to Institutions on behalf of eligible applicants in January each year.

(a) In 2009-10 the deadlines for applications were published on the Students Awards Agency for Scotland (SAAS) website.

(b) In 2010-11 the deadlines for applications were published on the SAAS website. In addition all continuing students were emailed twice in autumn 2010, to highlight the guarantee date for processing of applications before course commencement and twice in February 2011 to remind them of the deadline for applications. The deadline for applications was also heavily promoted in SAAS literature, by universities and colleges and on the SAAS Facebook and Twitter sites.

The increase in reminders was part of a concerted communications programme designed to encourage students to apply early and to inform them of any changes to the student support package.

The Scottish Government is determined that teachers should be in employment. The budget agreement with COSLA therefore guarantees enough teaching posts for every new probationer, for every teacher completing probation in summer 2011 to apply for and additional posts to reduce existing teacher unemployment.

We will continue to work with COSLA and local authorities to achieve a better reconciliation between local and national teacher workforce planning with a view to re-establishing an appropriate balance between teacher supply and demand.

We have no plans to conduct such a survey.

The following table shows how many students entered four year Bachelor of Education/MA and one year full-time and two year part-time Professional Graduate Diploma in Education courses by institution since 2009-10.

BEd/MA and PGDE Intakes

Notes:

The Open University offers a PGDE maths course (five to 10 places have been available). No returns have been received confirming numbers each year entering the course.

The following is the original answer (published on 15 June 2011); see below.

The following table shows how many students entered four year Bachelor of Education/MA and one year full-time and two year part-time Professional Graduate Diploma in Education courses by institution since 2009-10.

BEd/MA and PGDE Intakes

Notes:

The Open University offers a PGDE maths course (five to 10 places have been available). No returns have been received confirming numbers each year entering the course.

In May 2011, 2,218 potential probationary teachers were allocated places on the Teacher Induction Scheme for 2011-12. The number who start, and successfully complete, their probationary year cannot be confirmed until the start and end of the 2011-12 school year respectively.

The number of teaching posts that will available for the school year 2012-13 will depend on local authorities’ recruitment needs at that time.

The Scottish Government’s commitment to teacher employment has now been agreed by all three parties to the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers. The agreement will ensure that there will be a sufficient number of vacancies for all teachers seeking employment in 2011 to apply for.

Recruitment to these vacancies will be in accordance with each local authority’s existing locally agreed procedures which need to comply with current equality and employment legislation.