Chamber and committees

a) Funding allocated to the Scottish Government as a result of the introduction of the UK Government Apprenticeship Levy will form part of the Scottish block grant. Barnett consequentials accrued to the Scottish Government are added to or, if comparable UK budgets have been reduced rather than increased, are deducted from the total available funding available to Scottish Ministers. It is then for Scottish Ministers to decide how all the resources available to them should be allocated.

b) The cost to the Scottish public sector contribution to the UK Government Apprenticeship Levy is estimated at £73 million per annum.

c) Given the direct financial impact on public sector employers, between 2017-18 and 2019-20, we estimate that the Scottish Government’s net spending power will be £63 million lower than it would have been in the absence of the Levy.

Overall, the Scottish Government’s Spending Review discretionary resource DEL allocation, as amended in the March UK Budget and UK Autumn Statement, faces the equivalent of a real terms cut of 3.1% over the period relative to the 2016-17 budget.

The Scottish Government estimates that the majority of public bodies in Scotland will pay the UK Government's Apprenticeship Levy. Overall we estimate that Scottish public bodies will pay £73 million in 2016-17.

Exact details of each body’s contribution will not be known until the employers start to pay Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when the UK Government's Levy comes in to force in April 2017.

The Scottish Government welcomes international scrutiny of the education system, and the Scottish Government participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000. PISA aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

The Scottish Government participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries, and aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

We do not carry out an international comparison of the performance of primary school pupils. We took the decision in 2010 to limit our participation in international surveys to PISA in order to reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers and pupils, and because we felt PISA provides an effective indicator of how the whole Scottish education system is performing relative to other countries.

The Scottish Government welcomes international scrutiny of the education system, and participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries, and aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on total payroll costs centrally. This would be a matter for individual public bodies.

However, we do collect projected and actual paybill costs for those employees within public bodies covered by the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy for Staff Pay Remits. The total projected paybill (salary plus on-costs: National Insurance Contributions, pensions, allowances, etc.) for these employees is estimated to be £1.4 billion for 2016-17. This estimate excludes the paybill costs for senior appointments such as the Chief Executive, non-executive directors and all Senior Civil Service appointments because they are not covered by the Pay Policy for Staff Pay Remits.

A list of those public bodies covered by the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy is available at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/public-sector-pay/staff-pay/public-bodies-covered.

Estimates of these costs for future years are dependent upon the Pay Policy in place at the time; decisions taken on National Insurance Contributions and employers’ pension contributions by the UK Government; decisions on recruitment and workforce planning taken by individual public bodies; and decisions individual bodies take on their annual pay remits, following engagement with trade unions. The 2017-18 Public Sector Pay Policy will be announced alongside the draft budget statement on 15 December.

As reported in the Financial Review, we estimate that there were around 16,000 two year olds entitled to free early learning and childcare in Scotland in 2015 under the terms of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. This does not include those children receiving free ELC under the terms of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or those children who receive free ELC based on local priorities. Our Scotland-level estimate is based on information from various sources most of which are not disaggregated to local authority level.

a) Looked after children (including children formally looked after in kinship care but not those subject to a Kinship Care Order) - The table below contains a breakdown of looked after 2 year olds entitled to free ELC by local authority. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10. Some of these children may also qualify under other criteria eg because their parents receive qualifying benefits.

b) Kinship Care Orders / Guardianship - We do not collect data on 2 year olds eligible for free ELC through kinship care orders or guardianship. As explained in the Financial Review, to derive the estimate of overall two year old eligibility, we estimated that looked after children, children under kinship care orders and children in guardianship combined were around 3 per cent of the population and that the total population is around 60,000. Some of these children may also qualify under other criteria eg because their parents receive qualifying benefits. We estimate that this applies to 70 per cent.

c) Qualifying benefits – Information on households in receipt of qualifying benefits is held by Department for Work and Pensions and by HMRC. They do not provide the relevant information on two year olds to Scottish Government at a local authority level. For Scotland as a whole, we estimate that around 15,200 two-year olds are eligible for free ELC because they live in a household in receipt of qualifying benefits.

d) In need / local priorities - Scottish Government does not collect data on the number of children entitled to free ELC under the terms of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or those children who receive free ELC based on local priorities.