Chamber and committees

In response to Developing the Young Workforce: Scotland’s Youth Employment Strategy, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) developed a Gender Action Plan (GAP) to address gender imbalance at subject level in colleges and universities.

The GAP was published in August 2016 in partnership with Scottish Government, Skills Development Scotland, and other key stakeholders; and targets, amongst other things, an increase by five percentage points in the minority gender share in each of the 10 largest and most imbalanced college subject groups by 2021.

Colleges and universities have been asked to publish their own GAPs ahead of the new academic year, and these will be monitored annually by the SFC through the Outcome Agreement process, with the SFC due to publish their first annual progress report at the end of 2017.

The ambitions of the GAP are long-term, Audit Scotland noting in their Scotland’s Colleges 2017 report that addressing this issue will take a number of years.

In addition to work on the GAP the Scottish Government is currently developing a recruitment marketing campaign to attract people to train and work in the early learning and childcare sector. Working with a wide range of stakeholders, including colleges and the SFC, the aim is to attract significantly more males into that sector.

Improving gender equality is a priority for this Government and we are addressing the under-representation of girls and women in STEM subject courses and careers. Our STEM Education, Training and Lifelong Learning Strategy, to be finalised later this year, will set out how we will promote greater diversity across the uptake of STEM courses and within the STEM workforce.

We are currently supporting the Improving Gender Balance Scotland Project to challenge gender stereotyping in schools, and help young people make informed career decisions. Through the Developing the Young Workforce programme we are taking an integrated approach across education, training and employment to tackle inequality by enabling all young people to develop a range of employability skills to meet market demand, such as those needed by the STEM sector.

We are taking action to encourage women into technology-related careers. We invested over £1 million into the Digital World marketing campaign and Discover Digital World events to raise awareness of the varied and attractive careers available in ICT, particularly amongst women and young people. Going forward, we will also promote flexible working practices to employers, develop a mentoring framework for those considering, or looking to progress in, a career in tech, and create training opportunities for women career changers moving into the sector.

The Scottish Governments National Unscheduled Care Team is working closely with the local teams across NHS GG&C, including the Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI), to support the implementation of the six essential actions work.

We have recently been supporting the team at the GRI to establish a governance structure around the implementation of focussed actions that will support performance to improve; performance did see a significant and sustained dip but this is starting to show improvements. The latest weekly data shows that performance at the GRI against the 4 hour target has improved by over eight percentage points since week ending 2 July 2017, with the latest published weekly stats (w/e 30 July) showing performance at 92.0%. Key actions that have supported this improvement include new processes around patients being admitted to hospital that minimise delays for patients waiting for a bed.

We will continue to support the GRI to ensure sustainable performance going forward.

The Scottish Government recognises that there is a significant gender imbalance within this sector, this is a global issue across STEM professions that all major economies are attempting to tackle. We are not complacent however and we know we must continue to tackle it head on for inclusive growth.

As such ,through the Digital Scotland Business Excellence Partnership, the Scottish Government has made over £18 million available to help boost business’ and individual’s digital skills capabilities across Scotland Tackling the gender gap is integral to the partnership’s work and through the Digital Skills Investment Plan, have established a Gender Action Group and have published a gender action plan to tackle the gender gap in ICT subjects and careers.

The action plan is directed by research commissioned from Napier University, and launched on 2 November 2016. The plan’s actions focus on young women in education and those already in the workplace, or looking to return to work. Examples include; modules to promote flexible working practices to employers and the development of a mentoring framework for those considering, or looking to progress in, a career in tech.

To support an increase in the number of women in digital and the wider STEM professions the Scottish Government has established a Women Returners Programme, initially in the STEM sector, with £50,000 of funding via Equate Scotland. This project will allow women to get support in updating their skills to access the opportunities in this growing sector. Building on this, I announced additional funding of up to £200,000 and called for proposals to widen the initiative across sectors such as finance, where occupational segregation is a challenge.

In late April the First Minister announced funding of £500,000 for a Workplace Equality Fund to address long standing barriers in accessing the labour market. The aim of the fund is to reduce employment inequalities so that everyone – irrespective of gender, race or disability – has the opportunity to fulfil their potential, and improve Scotland’s economic performance. The Fund will support delivery of the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government; Race Equality Framework; Disability Action Plan; and Scotland’s Labour Market Strategy.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that both young women and men are encouraged to aspire to the full range of rewarding careers on offer to them in STEM.

We have published and consulted on our draft STEM Strategy for Education and Training which seeks to raise the level of knowledge and skills for all and provide opportunities to develop specialist skills for careers in STEM sectors.

The Scottish Government made a commitment that the Scottish budget 2017-18 deliver investment in mental health that exceeds £1 billion for the first time, and will in future years grow at a rate above the overall growth in the frontline NHS budget.

As stated in response to S5W-09861, it is for each NHS Board to decide best how to utilise resources while taking account of priorities to meet local health needs. We expect NHS Boards to plan their facilities and workforce to deliver these services, ensuring the provision of safe, effective and high quality patient care, delivered by the right professional at the right time.

The National Health and Social Care Workforce Plan published on 28 June sets out a range of actions, including actions on recruitment and retention, which will help strengthen and harmonise workforce planning practice, taking account of the future demand for safe and high quality services for Scotland’s people and work to accurately identify gaps in supply. These are complex issues which will require an incremental approach. The production of a National Plan will be the first step in this process, with future benefits and improvements impacting on all service users across Scotland.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s performance of 83.3% is below what we would expect and while the median wait for treatment was 42 days we must continue to do more to ensure timely access to diagnostics and treatment for those patients who did not receive their treatment within 62 days.

Challenges remain to the 62-day cancer access pathway with known capacity pressures in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde particularly for the colorectal and urological cancer pathways. The Scottish Government continues to support improved performance across NHS Scotland and are actively engaging NHS boards where there are challenges to sustained delivery against the 62-day standard. This is backed by additional funding of £2.85m released in June 2017 to NHS boards to support cancer waiting times performance with a focus on providing swift access to diagnostic investigations for suspected cancer patients.

The Social Care (Self-directed Support) (Scotland) Act 2013 represents a long-term, challenging transformation in how Scotland plans and delivers social care and, as such, is taking time to fully embed.

The Scottish Government continues its role to support and facilitate Health and Social Care Partnerships, social care providers and other partners to effect these changes. In December 2016 we published a new implementation plan which was developed in collaboration with social care providers, social workers, people who use services and their carers from across Scotland. It sets out priorities and firm actions to accelerate the pace of change and is supported by a financial commitment of
£9.5 million in 2017-18. This is in addition to £58.8 million since 2011.

We have taken a series of actions to help address issues around teacher recruitment. These include the launch of a new teacher recruitment campaign, increasing student intake targets for the sixth year in a row, taking steps to maintain teacher numbers as a central part of our priority to improve education and developed, alongside Scottish universities, a package of innovative routes to teaching to help encourage more graduates to become teachers.

The Teaching Makes People recruitment campaign was launched in February this year and targets the 20,000 STEM undergraduates who qualify from Scottish universities each year. It is an on-going, multi-year campaign and includes visits to careers fairs and face-to-face engagement with undergraduates on university campuses.

Due to the impacts on my constituents, I made representations both to the Council and at a public hearing, in my capacity as the constituency MSP for the area. I have not made any representations in my capacity as Minister for Transport and the Islands as per the Ministerial Code.