Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5O-03813

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 14 November 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body what steps it is taking to ensure that there is access to the Wi-Fi service across all of the estate.

Question reference: S5W-26097

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 13 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that working parents on low incomes with flexible childcare requirements will be able to access the proposed 1,140 hours of funded childcare.

Flexibility should be driven by local demand from families regarding the nature, and type, of provision that they require.

In line with their statutory duty to consult parents and carers on the provision of early learning and childcare (ELC), as set out in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, local authorities are working with families to inform how they make ELC available in their area in order to put in place a flexible and high quality local offer that meets the needs of local families.

In addition, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 (Modification) (No.1) Order 2019, which increased the maximum session length for funded ELC from 8 to 10 hours, came into force on 1 August 2019. This means families can now access their child’s ELC entitlement over longer sessions if this best meets their family needs and is available locally.

This will build on previous investment to increase flexibility. The Care Inspectorate report that flexibility has increased across the sector since 2014, including continued increases in the flexibility in opening times for daycare of children services with more families able to access longer days.

As part of the expansion to 1,140 hours the Scottish Government expects to see further increases in the flexibility offered to families with regards to how they access their child’s funded ELC entitlement. Alongside this Funding Follows the Child, which will be introduced in August 2020, will empower parents in making their choice of ELC setting for their child.

Question reference: S5W-26098

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 30 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 13 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that the flexibility and availability of the expansion to 1,140 hours of funded childcare is being monitored.

Flexibility of funded early learning and childcare (ELC) is monitored using Care Inspectorate data. Data on flexibility in terms of opening hours and holiday provision is provided in Care Inspectorate’s annual Early Learning and Childcare Statistics publication.

The regularly published ELC delivery progress reports also monitor availability of funded ELC.

The Scottish Government has commissioned the Scottish Study of Early Learning and Childcare (SSELC) to evaluate the extent to which the expansion programme is achieving its three long-term outcomes. This will include evidence on how parents are using flexible childcare arrangements.

In line with their statutory duty to consult parents and carers on the provision of ELC, as set out in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, local authorities work with families to inform how they make ELC available in their area in order to put in place a flexible and high quality local offer that meets the needs of local families.

Question reference: S5W-25883

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 5 November 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how much each local authority has (a) budgeted for and (b) spent in each year since 2016-17 on sport, including providing support for arms-length organisations.

Question reference: S5W-25832

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 October 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government, further to its news release of 10 September 2019, Doubling investment in future skills, what progress it is making in developing the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan.

Scotland already has many of the skills required to facilitate the transition to a low carbon economy. These skills exist across many of our sectors such as energy, engineering, construction, and chemical science.

Work is already underway with SDS and Zero Waste Scotland creating a Circular Economy Skills and Education Hub, working with the FE sector and Offshore Wind to develop a sector wide curriculum, and Energy Efficiency, and other stakeholders to further develop the evidence base for the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan.

Question reference: S5W-25467

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 30 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what data it collects regarding the memberships of gym and leisure centre facilities that are publicly-owned, including those that are operated by arms-length organisations.

Question reference: S5W-25468

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 24 September 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 30 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what data it collects regarding the memberships of gym and leisure centre facilities that are privately-owned, including those that were previously operated by local authorities.

Question reference: S5O-03604

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 October 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what the impact has been on the rural economy of reductions to local authority services.

Question reference: S5W-24837

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 August 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 12 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how funding support is allocated to support the learning of Mandarin in schools.

The Scottish Government is providing support for the teaching of Chinese culture, history and languages in Scotland through funding to:

- The Confucius Institute for Scotland’s Schools (CISS) to provide strategic leadership of the Scotland’s Confucius Classroom Hubs, opportunities for young people and teachers to undergo intensive language learning in China, and to support the partnership bringing Chinese native speaking teachers into Scottish classrooms. In 2019-2020, we provided CISS with a grant of £678,600.

- The British Council to enable them to manage a programme of Chinese Language Assistants for schools in Scotland as part of the Modern Language Assistant Programme. In 2019-20, we provided the British Council with a total of £195,000 for the language assistant programmes in Scotland.

- Local authorities to assist them with the delivery of the 1+ 2 languages policy which also supports the learning of Mandarin in schools. To date, since 2013-2014, we have provided Local Authorities with an extra £30.2 million for 1+2 languages. There is no set hierarchy of languages as part of the policy and it is up to Local Authorities and schools to choose the languages that suit best their local circumstances and learners, including Mandarin.

Question reference: S5W-24838

Asked by: Mary Fee, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 21 August 2019
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 12 September 2019

To ask the Scottish Government how many qualified teachers of Mandarin in schools there are in each local authority area, and what steps it is taking to increase the number.

The number of secondary school teachers with Mandarin as their main subject by local authority (LA) from the 2018 Teacher Census is provided in the following table. Please note there were no teachers who listed Mandarin as their ‘other’ subject in 2018.

Secondary school teachers with Mandarin as main subject taught by LA, 2018
Aberdeen City	0.5
Aberdeenshire	0.0
Angus	1.0
Argyll & Bute	0.0
Clackmannanshire	0.0
Dumfries & Galloway	0.0
Dundee City	0.0
East Ayrshire	1.0
East Dunbartonshire	0.0
East Lothian	0.0
East Renfrewshire	2.0
Edinburgh City	2.1
Na h-Eileanan Siar	0.0
Falkirk	0.0
Fife	3.0
Glasgow City	2.4
Highland	0.0
Inverclyde	0.0
Midlothian	1.0
Moray	0.0
North Ayrshire	0.0
North Lanarkshire	0.0
Orkney Islands	0.0
Perth & Kinross	0.8
Renfrewshire	0.0
Scottish Borders	0.0
Shetland Islands	0.0
South Ayrshire	0.0
South Lanarkshire	1.0
Stirling	0.0
West Dunbartonshire	0.0
West Lothian	0.4

All local authorities	15.2
Excludes head teachers and depute head teachers.

In addition, the latest figures, collected in October 2018 from the Confucius classroom hubs show that approximately 53,513 Scottish pupils and 409 schools were involved in Chinese language and cultural programmes across the 44 Confucius Classroom hubs in Scotland, and that 59 native speaking teachers of Chinese were working across Scottish local authority schools.