Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provides direct revenue funding to the National Museums of Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, V&A Dundee, Scottish Maritime Museum, Scottish Fisheries Museum and National Mining Museum of Scotland. The Scottish Government also provides Museums Galleries Scotland with revenue funding for disbursement across the museums and galleries sector.

This information is not held centrally.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 places a duty on education authorities to establish procedures for identifying and meeting the additional support needs of children and young people.

It is a matter for local authorities, as employers, to ensure that their teachers have the appropriate professional skills and knowledge necessary to enable them to undertake the teaching duties allocated to them. In the case of teachers who are employed to wholly or mainly teach pupils with a hearing impairment, a visual impairment or both a hearing and visual impairment it is a requirement that they have an additional appropriate qualification to teach such pupils. Alternatively, it is acceptable that they are in the process of obtaining such a qualification providing they do so within five years.

The Scottish Government funds the Scottish Sensory Centre to provide high quality career long professional learning for teachers of children and young people with sensory impairments, including those with hearing impairments.

The General Teaching Council for Scotland registers teachers to teach either in the primary sector or in the secondary sector. ‘To teach deaf pupils’ is not a registration category used by the General Teaching Council for Scotland.

The supplementary dataset to the Scottish Government’s annual teacher census identifies the numbers of primary, secondary, special and centrally employed teachers who have indicated that their main subject taught, or other subject taught, is categorised as ‘Hearing Impairment’. The 2013 dataset can be viewed at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/teachcenssuppdata The all Scotland totals are shown at tables 2.8, 3.9, 4.8 and 5.2 respectively. The breakdowns by local authority, where identifiable, are shown at tables 7.9, 8.9, 9.8 and 10.2 respectively.

As explained in the answer to S4W-22332 on 8 September 2014, none of these teachers is registered to teach deaf pupils.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The findings will be used to inform discussions with young people, stakeholders and employers and to shape the refresh of the youth employment strategy to be published later this year. We will publish a summary of the findings in due course.

In Parliament on 24 June 2014, I announced the Scottish Government’s intention to refresh the youth employment strategy. It is not a formal publication and has not been advertised as such. A range of stakeholders and interested groups have been approached for their views. It was included in a news release on the Scottish Government website on 19 August 2014.

We are working with a range of stakeholders on the refresh of the youth employment strategy. We supported an event for young people that took place on 19 August 2014. Employers, public bodies and the third sector will all have the chance to contribute to the refreshed strategy which is expected to be published later in 2014.

The Labour Force Survey figures for April to June 2014 demonstrate that youth unemployment rate in Scotland has decreased by 2.9% over the year to 16.2%, the same as in the UK.

The Scottish Government plans to publish a refreshed youth employment strategy later in 2014.

This type of survey was chosen to ensure that employers had an early opportunity to input to the refresh of the strategy. The responses will supplement engagement with key stakeholders. In addition to the survey and engagement plan we have supported the development of an event for young people scheduled for 19 August 2014 and we are working with the Chambers of Commerce on an event for employers in September 2014.