Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not provide specific funding to local authorities to offer free musical instrument lessons.

All local authorities in Scotland provide young people with a variety of opportunities to develop the skills of playing a musical instrument. Authorities decide how to provide such opportunities depending on local circumstances, priorities and traditions.

The government’s Instrumental Music Group report of June 2013, recommendation 5, noted that “decisions on charging for services sit with local authorities”. The Scottish Government has no plans to intervene in the long standing arrangements whereby decisions around the provision of instrumental music tuition, including policies for access, concessions and charging, are for each authority to decide on as they see fit and according to local demands and circumstances.

In December 2012, £1 million of funding was announced by the Scottish Government for the purchase of musical instruments for Scottish schools. This helped authorities tackle the issue of children being put off taking up learning an instrument because of the costs involved.

The government’s work on instrumental music has now moved to a new phase through the creation of a ‘Music Education Partnership Group’, bringing together a wide range of organisations involved in music education to further promote and sustain excellent and exciting music education in Scotland.

I discussed teacher recruitment issues when I met with Ken Muir, Chief Executive of the General Teaching Council of Scotland (GTCS) on 10 September 2015. My officials regularly meet with the GTCS to discuss a range of issues including teacher recruitment.

Education Scotland, our national improvement agency for education, undertakes a wide range of activities to promote assurance and improvement in the quality of education provided by Scottish schools, including undertaking a sample of full inspections annually. The number of full inspections Education Scotland undertakes each year varies. Inspection is one strong driver of improvement, but the national inspection programme is designed to recognise that local authorities retain primary responsibility for securing improvement in their schools.

Education Scotland does not retain the number of inspections by sector prior to 1 April 2002 and as such we have provided the number of school inspections for the period 2002 onwards. The figures for 2015-16 include both the inspections that have taken place since 1 April 2015 as well as those Education Scotland plans to undertake up to 31 March 2016.

Scotland has a tri-level approach to quality assurance and improvement in schools:

At the first level all schools undertake systematic self-evaluation and improvement planning, using a common framework of quality and performance indicators;

At the second level local authorities have a statutory duty to assure the quality of provision in their schools and secure improvement; and

At the third level, Education Scotland inspects a national sample of schools each year and enhances that sample with individual schools judged to be at risk.

Over and above the national sample of schools inspected annually, Education Scotland undertakes additional inspections of any school where there is a clear need for external review, for example to ensure a quick response to an identified risk of serious under-performance.

During the period of implementation of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), Education Scotland deployed its staff to a number of other intensive support and challenge activities with schools and local authorities. This involved visits from Education Scotland staff, including HM Inspectors to a large number of schools across Scotland. While these types of visits and activities are not full inspections they have played a strong role in driving improvement in schools across Scotland.

Over the period September 2010 to March 2015, HM Inspectors and Education Scotland staff provided targeted support for schools and local authorities as follows:

September 2010: 48 additional support for CfE activities were undertaken by HM Inspectors, in partnership with local authorities, SQA and Learning and Teaching Scotland. They included 18 whole-schools visits of different kinds, 18 subject-based support events, seven senior manager/cluster support visits and five sessions with Education Authority senior managers/quality improvement officers and headteachers, one of which involved five education authorities.

October to November 2010: 147 additional support for CfE activities were carried out by HM Inspectors in partnership with local authorities, Learning and Teaching Scotland and SQA.

January to June 2012: a total of 39 support events took place across 20 authorities to support changes to the primary curriculum.

April 2012 to March 2013: following an audit with local authorities to identify what further support might be needed on introducing new National Qualifications, Education Scotland staff carried out visits to 49 secondary schools.

April 2013 to March 2014: Education Scotland carried out visits to 70 secondary schools across all local authorities.

April 2014 to March 2015: Education Scotland carried out visits to 47 secondary schools across 30 local authorities.

Education Scotland is now refocusing its resources to increase the number of school inspections. This increase in inspections will be complemented by new types of improvement activity, in particular the work of the Attainment Advisors working on the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

The Scottish Government is in frequent discussion with the Scottish Qualifications Authority on a range of matters relating to the national qualifications, including the post results services.

sportscotland capital funding into tennis projects in each year since 1999 (key capital programmes: Sports Facilities Fund and Legacy 2014 Active Places Fund).

This funding comprises of Scottish Government and lottery funding. Additionally, this funding is for specific tennis facilities and does not include investment into multi-sport facilities where tennis may be played.

*sportscotland capital funding represents 31.5% of the overall investment into tennis facilities since 1999-2000.

sportscotland investment into Tennis Scotland (sports governing body):

sportscotland investment into Tennis Scotland for 2015-16 represents 27.5% of the governing body’s overall annual turnover, an increase of 5.5% since 2011-12. It is important to highlight here that, while sportscotland’s provides investment to sports governing bodies, greater emphasis should be placed on the bodies (majority of which are private limited companies) to explain how they are generating income and how this income is being utilised to develop the sport, rather than simply focussing on sportscotland investment.

The Scottish Government provides funding of £42 million a year through the local government settlement until 2015-16, for local authorities to continue to invest in major new flood protection schemes. Local authorities were able to apply for this funding on the basis of criteria agreed by the Scottish Government and COSLA. After the last round of applications, all of the available funding in the spending review period to 2015-16 was allocated. The following table shows the four flood protection schemes, which were allocated funding from the flooding component of the general capital grant to local authorities, following the last round of applications.

From April 2016 onwards the flooding component of the general capital grant will be allocated in line with the priorities set out in the flood risk management strategies which will be published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency by 22 December 2015.