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Further to question S6W-07275, the latest Bikeability Scotland participation statistics are as follows:

The Scottish Government is establishing an Implementation Group to drive forward the International Education Strategy and is developing an implementation plan that will set out timelines for delivering priority actions. We are already making progress, for example, with the launch of 20 Scottish Education Exchange Programme Test and Learn Projects in January this year.

Continuing the collaborative approach to developing the International Education Strategy (IES) the Scottish Government will establish an Implementation Group to oversee its implementation, with representation from partners across the sector. This Group will provide leadership and strategic oversight and ensure the strategy’s actions are delivering our shared ambitions for international higher education.

The International Education Strategy lays out the Scottish Government's commitment to promoting Scottish institutions and degrees internationally. This includes supporting universities and colleges in establishing new transnational education partnerships such as distance learning, international campuses and teaching partnerships.

Bikeability Scotland is the national cycle training programme for school children which supports the next generation of confident and responsible people travelling by bike. A record 60,000 children benefited from cycle training across all levels of the programme in 2022-23, and 66.7% of all primary schools delivered essential life skills through Level 2 on-road training.

Ensuring that every child leaves school with the ability to cycle safely, is not only about training. It’s also about providing a safe environment through the development of active travel infrastructure. We are committed to supporting many more people to walk, wheel or cycle for everyday journeys and are allocating record funding for that purpose.

The Active Travel budget for 2023-24 increased to a record £189.2 million. This is a nearly £40 million increase on the active travel budget from the previous financial year providing scope to greatly expand and expedite the delivery of active travel infrastructure, behaviour change programmes and access to bikes across the country. We are investing in ambitious on and off-road segregated walking and cycling routes, safer junctions and improved design of place.

Our Equally Safe strategy, Scotland’s strategy to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls, acknowledges the significant impact domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG) can have on children and young people and their families lives, including impacts on their health, education, wellbeing and future life chances.

Through Equally Safe, which is co-owned by COSLA and the Scottish Government, we are working collaboratively with key partners to ensure that its principles are embedded into the work we do that supports children, young people and families who have experienced VAWG. This includes ensuring support is available through Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection systems, housing and homelessness support services and community justice support services amongst others.

We are also investing £19 million a year in specialist services and projects through the Delivering Equally Safe (DES) Fund, £18.5m for specialist advocacy support for victim/ survivors of gender based violence from the Victim Centred Approach Fund and £573,300 through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund & Adult Learning and Empowering Communities Fund for improving children and family wellbeing.

The DES fund supports 83 projects that undertake work with children and young people who have experienced or witnessed VAWG, including funding to projects delivering the CEDAR programme, which aims to help mothers support their children in their recovery from domestic abuse. Funding is also given to support the role out of Safe and Together, an internationally recognised suite of tools and interventions designed to help professionals in children and family services become domestic abuse informed.

We will continue to ensure support for children, young people and families through our commitment to the Equally Safe strategy.

The Scottish Government funds delivery of 1140 hours of high quality funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) to all three and four-year-olds and around a quarter of families with an eligible two-year-old, who experience the most disadvantage, across Scotland. This entitlement is regardless of the working status of their parents - putting children first.

We recognise how important both early learning and school age childcare are for families, especially those experiencing poverty and that is why within this year’s Programme for Government we have committed to work with local government and partners in the ELC sector to expand our childcare offers.

We recognise that younger children have different needs to those aged three or four and therefore our new offer will be guided by what the evidence tells us about what is best for children and families depending on the age and stage of the child.

We also know that for children aged under three, how much they benefit from Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) is determined by crucial factors such as their family background, what age they start in ELC, the quality of services and the balance of hours they spend between care at home and in ELC settings. That is why we are committed to listening to families and to putting quality at the heart our work on both the Early Adopter Communities (EACs) and the expansion for two year olds.

We have recently completed and published two key pieces of research to help us understand and identify what models of ELC are best for younger children. The first is a summary of work to map and the second a undertaken by Public Health Scotland. Evidence from this early insights work supports taking a considered approach to policy development in 2024-25, so that we understand what is right for families with under three’s.

Over the next year we will continue to build on this early insights work by piloting new approaches via funding from the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund to test models of holistic family support and by engaging with the ELC sector to understand what is required to support an expansion.

We are already engaging with families through our work with EAC’s and are working to expand our reach to include Fife and Shetland and also to broaden the work to include younger children. This work will provide us with a clearer picture about what approaches deliver the greatest impact for families with younger children.

In parallel we will continue to work with local authorities and our partners in the sector to support up-take of the existing two-year-old offer, to ensure as many children as possible receive the benefits of high quality ELC, as well as planning for a further expansion.

At the present time, the Scottish Government collects and maintains data annually in respect of Child Protection in Scotland. This data is collected and published as part of the annual Official Statistics publication. Each Scottish Local Authority providing information on the children who were involved in the Child Protection process during the year. This includes the following information on Child Protection.

1. Number of Child Protection Investigations and outcomes of the investigation.

2. Number of Child Protection Case Conferences (also known as Child Protection Planning Meetings). This includes the type of Case conference (i.e. Pre-Birth, Initial, Review, Transfer In) and the type of concern(s) identified at the Case Conference (e.g. domestic abuse, parental substance misuse). This also includes the child's primary known/suspected abuser at the time of the Case Conference.

3. Number of children on the Child Protection Register.

4. Number of Child Protection registrations and de-registrations.

5. Sociodemographic details on each child involved in any of the above (age; gender; ethnic group; religion; disability).

In addition to this, the Children and Families Analysis Team also collects and publishes monthly Management Information data in respect of Child Protection in Scotland. This data is collected and published as part of the monthly data collection and publication. This includes the following information on Child Protection concerns and interventions:

1. Number of child protection concerns and child wellbeing concerns.

2. Number of inter-agency referral discussions.

3. Number of children on the Child Protection Register.

4. Number of Child Protection registrations and de-registrations.

5. Number of registrations where domestic abuse was recorded as a significant factor.

6. Number of referrals to the Reporter on offence and non-offence grounds.

7. Number of arrange Hearing decisions and number of Hearings held.

8. Number of Compulsory Supervision Orders granted.

The following figures, drawn from the Scottish Government’s annual school census show both the number of primary and secondary Gaelic medium teachers that have been employed in each year since 2016 and the number that would be able to teach through the medium of Gaelic.

Primary school teachers by ability to teach through Gaelic medium

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-22502 on 8 November 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at /chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .