Questions and answers

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 ��˿�� 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: S6W-15986

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 24 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government when the evaluation report of the pilot scheme for deferred entry of children to P1 will be published.

Question reference: S6W-15967

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government for what purpose it awarded the £26 million of additional funding for colleges.

Question reference: S6W-15968

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what guidance it has given to the Scottish Funding Council on distributing funding to colleges for the financial year 2023-24.

The Scottish Government allocates budgets to the college and university sectors at aggregate level. SFC holds the responsibility to distribute funding to individual colleges and universities. Prior to publishing funding allocations, the SFC works with the college sector to identify the best split of the available resources provided in the Budget, taking into account Government priorities and the college sector’s needs. Scottish Government priorities are outlined in the annual letter of strategic guidance, which is normally issued in March/April each year. SFC announces indicative allocations in March and final allocations to the sectors in May each year.

Question reference: S6W-15969

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has issued a letter of guidance to the Scottish Funding Council for 2023-24, and, if so, when the letter was issued.

Question reference: S6W-15742

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Clare Haughey on 23 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government, according to the latest data, (a) how many and (b) what percentage of children are currently accessing (i) 600 and (ii) 1,140 hours of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), broken down by local authority area.

Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland provides census data on numbers of registrations for funded early learning and childcare (ELC) at the local authority level as of September 2022. These figures are shown in the following table. The census does not currently record the number of hours being accessed by each child.

Local Authority	Number of funded registrations
Aberdeen City	3,740
Aberdeenshire	4,765
Angus	1,806
Argyll and Bute	1,290
City of Edinburgh	7,765
Clackmannanshire	897
Dumfries and Galloway	2,244
Dundee City	2,546
East Ayrshire	2,346
East Dunbartonshire	2,024
East Lothian	2,073
East Renfrewshire	1,897
Falkirk	2,699
Fife	6,452
Glasgow City	10,403
Highland	3,946
Inverclyde	1,255
Midlothian	2,196
Moray	1,521
Na h-Eileanan Siar	406
North Ayrshire	1,952
North Lanarkshire	5,855
Orkney Islands	382
Perth and Kinross	2,398
Renfrewshire	3,427
Scottish Borders	1,704
Shetland Islands	441
South Ayrshire	1,794
South Lanarkshire	5,939
Stirling	1,506
West Dunbartonshire	1,583
West Lothian	3,363
Scotland	92,615

Separately, the latest management information collected from local authorities and published by the Improvement Service in September 2022, reported that there were 93,902 children accessing funded ELC as of August 2022. Of that number, 83,237 children (88.6%) were accessing 1,140 hours, 91,465 (97.4%) children were accessing more than 600 hours, and 2,437 children (2.6%) were accessing 600 hours or fewer. This management information is not published at local authority level.

Question reference: S6O-02073

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 March 2023
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 29 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration it has given to any potential tax implications of pay awards currently being administered by local authorities.

Question reference: S6W-15734

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 09 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Patrick Harvie on 22 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how many free bikes have been provided to eligible school-age children, broken down by pilot scheme.

Question reference: S6W-15962

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 22 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government how many applications have been made to the STEM bursary scheme in each academic year from 2018-19 to date.

Question reference: S6W-15897

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 13 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Shirley-Anne Somerville on 22 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what the total spend has been on its policy, Language Learning in Scotland: A 1+2 Approach.

Since the introduction of the 1+2 approach to language learning in 2013 until the current 2022-23 financial year, the Scottish Government has provided local authorities with a total of £36.8 million in additional funding to support them to implement this approach in schools.

In the same period we have offered grant funding of approximately £15 million to organisations undertaking activities which support the 1+2 approach or complement its broader aims.

Question reference: S6W-15725

Asked by: Michael Marra, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 07 March 2023
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 16 March 2023

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the final recommendations of the Lessons Learned exercise carried out by Strathesk Resolutions throughout 2021-22.

Following industrial action within the college sector in 2019, the then Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science committed to undertaking a further lessons learned exercise to break the cycle of annual disputes within the sector.

The Scottish Government commissioned Strathesk Resolutions in 2021 to take forward a lessons learned exercise. The purpose of the exercise was to attempt to reduce the likelihood of future industrial dispute and industrial action, with a view to identifying factors that have led to dispute in recent years and to create an environment for more productive dialogue in future negotiations.

The final report compiled by Strathesk Resolutions, dated 25 March 2022, provides the findings and recommendations to the Scottish Government from the lessons learned exercise. At present, the Scottish Government is awaiting formal responses to the recommendations from partners in the Collective Bargaining process and will use these to inform the next steps regarding the implementation of the recommendations.

Critically, and as made clear by the Lessons Learned report, the Scottish Government will maintain its position of not intervening directly in the national collective bargaining process.

Pilot	No of Bikes Distributed
Cycling Scotland	318
Angus Recycles	1349
Bike for Good	258
Scottish Cycling	742
St Pauls Youth Forum	707
Shetland Council	8
Sustrans	178
Bike Buddies	216
Gearing Up	24
Total	3800

Year	No of applications
2018	154
2019	171
2020	221
2021	196
2022	126