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Getting it Right for Every Child is Scotland’s national approach to improving outcomes for children and young people. We are committed to investing £500m in Whole Family Wellbeing to improve holistic family support so that families get the right support, in the right way and at the right time. The GIRFEC approach is not directly comparable to the Early Help Scheme.

As set out in answer PQ S6W-20065 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 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 and which influence school attendance, and to provide clear 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. I am welcome to learning from approaches to improving attendance from elsewhere.

The breakdown for STEM bursaries awarded by local authority is available in the STEM Teacher bursary evaluation reports on the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) website: .

The previous STEM bursary scheme has been expanded this year to include Gaelic and renamed to the Teaching Bursary in Scotland bursary scheme. As of 31 August, 61 Teaching bursaries have been awarded.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information as the recruitment and employment of teachers including recruitment practices are matters for individual councils.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to ensure that their schools are safe for pupils, staff and their users. Those local authorities affected have now published a list of any schools where RAAC has been identified, and it would be for those individual local authorities to decide if they publish the projected cost to remedy any issues within their school estate.

In addition, the First Minister has been clear, while we do not have contingencies within Scottish Government to spend on RAAC.

The UK Government’s Chancellor of the Exchequer recently committed to spend what was necessary, and we would expect to see new funding made available. Continual UK Government cuts to capital budgets make responses across the public sector more difficult.

This is an issue we have been alive to for some time. On 16 th August, the Deputy First Minister wrote to the UK Government’s Treasury seeking clarity on new capital funding to deal with RAAC. Then, on 3 rd September, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education seeking clarity on funding. Thus far, neither letter has received a response.

The number of full time equivalent pupil support assistants by Local Authority is available in the school support staff statistics: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

A summary of the changes from 2018 to 2022 is provided in the following table.

The Scottish Government COVID-19 guidance for schools remains in place and we know that schools continue to find the health protection principles in that guidance to be helpful in protecting the health of staff and pupils.

We have however been working with Public Health Scotland, local authorities and other stakeholders to develop updated guidance that better reflects current circumstances and will help schools continue to prevent the spread of COVID, other respiratory infections and infectious diseases in general.

The Scottish Government is committed to listening to the voices of children and young people across the education landscape. Learner engagement and participation are vital elements within Scotland’s curriculum, and these are further enhanced with the incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots Law.

Education Scotland has recently updated the Successful Young Leaders of Learning programme, which supports learners from P4 upwards to engage in school improvement activity, working in collaboration with other schools. Schools also have access to the ‘Learner Participation in Education Settings’ and the ‘How Good is OUR school?’ online resources, which support the engagement of learners in school improvement and decision making within the classroom, school and community. Education Scotland also provides professional learning to take schools through the materials, providing an opportunity for further dialogue and support.

The publication cost £479.75 to produce. Two Civil Servants were allocated to its production.

Scottish Government's Plan for School Research 2023-2026 sets out how each objective will be pursued, specifically:

• delivering robust and timely evidence to support the policy making process – through publishing a suite of research reports and official statistics, aligned to the Government’s research needs.
• collaboration with key partners – via the National Advisory Group and Academic Reference Group.
• supporting independent education research – through improved routes for knowledge exchange (such as the Education Research Seminar Series) and expanding membership of the Academic Reference Group to include early career researchers.
• continuing to improve data access – by continuing to make datasets available on Administrative Data Research Scotland platform and promoting available datasets and how to access them to the wider education research community.

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, Scottish Funding Council (SFC) publications including those reporting on college withdrawals, undergo systematic and periodic reviews on the strengths and limitations of the data.

As an example of the continuing work in this area, the SFC has initiated collection of students’ reasons for withdrawal from colleges. Experimental data has previously been collected, and SFC will be working with Colleges Scotland and College Development Network to improve the capture of student withdrawal data for publication in future years.

The SFC is also progressing an internal review of the definitions of college student outcomes metrics, to ensure that they provide the most appropriate measures of success for students.