Chamber and committees

It is a matter for local authorities to decide how much funding they allocate to specific services. The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

Information on the number of hours of support staff provision per week, including home-school link workers, provided by each local authority is available at School support staff statistics - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . Figures are available from 2017.

As set out in our current guidance “Included, Engaged and Involved Part 1: Promoting and Managing School Attendance,” Local Authorities are expected to have robust processes and guidance for children who do not attend school, from the first day they are absent until they are re-engaged with education. I have expressed concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on attendance and in order to inform our policy response, I have asked Education Scotland to undertake work to better understand the current barriers and challenges experienced by schools, children and young people and their families which influence school attendance. I expect to receive the findings of Education Scotland’s work later this year. This work will provide examples of effective strategies that are supporting improved attendance, and clarity on what further support or intervention is required in areas where attendance is not improving.

The findings from our forthcoming Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research, which will be published in November, will also provide important information on the extent to which pupils are disengaging from learning, which we will consider alongside the Education Scotland work.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W- 22039 on 30 October 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

This information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Practitioner Services is the body that pays independent contractor dentists on behalf of the Health Boards.

HMP Highland will expand provision of custodial services available within local community and reduce reliance on accommodation in other locations. Its completion will allow the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to better serve the local community, meet the needs of people in their care and support staff.

Enabling work commenced on site in 2021-2022 and further advance works have been carried out during 2022-23 and are continuing into 2023-24. Work has completed on site with the archaeologists finding significant evidence of roundhouses. Site clearing and substantial ground work is complete for the ground source heating system. An advance work contract was awarded to secure the perimeter concrete panels, which are now being installed, as well as the modular cells.

The March 2023 update to the Infrastructure Investment Plan sets out that HMP Highland is estimated to cost £139.5m and construction completion estimated in spring 2025. These time-scales and costs will be updated when the main construction contract is awarded late 2023/early 2024.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The teaching standards set by the General Teaching Council for Scotland require teachers to be able to identify and respond appropriately to pupils with difficulties in or barriers to learning. During initial teacher education, student teachers will gain sufficient knowledge of additional support needs for them to be able to support the child in question themselves or to seek specialised information and specialised support if necessary. Scottish Ministers have recently outlined in our Programme for Government 2023-24 our commitment to work with teachers to provide additional professional learning opportunities while seeking to build on the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan.

In 2022-23, the Scottish Government provided over £500,000 to voluntary sector organisations to support children and young people with additional support needs, including sensory loss. This includes funding to the Scottish Sensory Centre to support the training of school staff to provide effective support to Deaf children and young people.

In December 2021, we published the Autism in Schools Action plan and the majority of the actions are complete. Several of the actions, such as the funding of professional learning resources like the Autism Toolbox are intended to be ongoing, to reflect best practice and current research in this area.

Government officials will continue to engage with stakeholders to ascertain the current backlog in repairs and maintenance across the sector.

The Scottish Government has provided strategically targeted additional funding of £500k in capital funding to Museums Galleries Scotland for the sector in both 2021-22 and 2022-23. This is being distributed as capital resilience funding to help with essential repairs and maintenance across the sector.

The Scottish Government supports the further development of Waste Water Intelligent Networks (WWIN) and the benefits they will deliver. However, as this is an operational matter for Scottish Water, I have asked its Chief Executive to respond. His response is as follows:

Scottish Water has committed to installing 1,000 network monitors by 2024, as outlined within its Improving Urban Waters Routemap ( https://www.scottishwater.co.uk/-/media/ScottishWater/Document-Hub/Key-Publications/Urban-Water-Improvements/SW-Urban-Waters-Route-Map.pdf )

Additionally, Scottish Water will deploy a further 1,200 network monitors as part of the WWIN programme. This will further enhance their predictive Operational response and analysis of the data for longer term planning.

As set out in Programme for Government 2023, the Scottish Government is continuing to prioritise working across the Health and Wellbeing portfolio to maximise the contribution of culture to achieving key cross-policy outcomes.

The Scottish Government has set up an internal Health and Culture Working Group to support this work and will continue to ensure that culture is represented in any wider Scottish Government discussions about social prescribing going forward.

Our response to the National Partnership for Culture’s recommendations committed to begin the scoping of a new Youth Arts Strategy, which we are taking forward with Creative Scotland. Our refreshed Culture Strategy Action Plan, which will be published in the coming months, will provide an update on this work.