Our announcement of £900,000 for local authorities to aid training of support staff was made in direct response to the findings of the Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research, which indicated that it is school support staff who have the most challenging experiences in dealing with negative behaviours, and that support staff themselves would welcome more training to support them in their roles.

Allocation and use of the funding was agreed at the meeting of COSLA Leaders on 26 January 2024. Each local authority received a minimum of £10,000 of funding, with the remaining funding distributed on the basis of pupil numbers. A letter was issued to local authorities on 7 February 2024 advising them of their funding allocation, and that this funding was intended to be used as a contribution towards procuring and providing training for the support staff workforce. The funding could be used flexibly by local authorities to meet the needs of their workforce, but it was intended that the funding would support the provision of training for school support staff in aid of improved relationships and behaviour, including: provision of training from external sources, costs associated with provision of training including securing training provision, venue and staff costs, including backfill of posts to allow staff to attend, and other appropriate costs. In line with the current funding arrangement with local authorities, it was a matter for local authorities to decide how best to use their allocated funding to help the support staff in their area.

The Scottish Government is actively considering the role of AI in schools. Discussions have been ongoing with key partners including the SQA, Education Scotland, local authorities, the Scottish AI Alliance and academics, to ensure that AI can be used effectively and safely in learning and teaching.

In addition, we are undertaking an education-based project via the Scottish Government’s technology accelerator programme, CivTech. The project seeks to use AI and technology to streamline administrative tasks for teachers and contribute to a reduction in workload. The project is currently in early development.

Following the recent International Summit on the Teaching Profession, we have committed to consider carefully the guidance produced by the OECD and Education International, and to create an equivalent set of guidelines and guardrails for the Scottish context. We will do this through a partnership approach, liaising with local government and teachers’ representatives.

In addition, it is anticipated that the Curriculum Improvement Cycle will examine the skills, knowledge and understanding that children and young people will be required to develop in respect of AI.

The Scottish Government values the contribution of Local Government workers to delivering essential public services across the country and urges all parties to work together to avoid disruptive industrial action.

The Scottish Government respects the independence of Local Government and has no formal role in pay negotiations which take place between COSLA and Scottish Joint Council (SJC) trade unions. It is also the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and workforce, including any contractual changes regarding terms and conditions.

The Scottish Government will continue to engage with Local Government, including through COSLA, to mitigate the impact of any industrial action that does take place.

In line with our commitment to creating safe and nurturing school environments, the Scottish Government prioritises approaches that address behaviour through understanding and positive intervention.

Our approach to relationships and behaviour in schools is focussed on prevention and de-escalation of concerns. School staff should be supported through clear understanding of their establishment’s relationships and behaviour policy, arrangements for de-escalation and support that can be provided to them where situations do escalate.

The Scottish Government has not received any requests from local authorities for funding for teacher self-defence training in each of the last five years.

Public Health Scotland (PHS) publishes statistics on the length of time patients wait to be seen as a new outpatient or admitted for treatment as an inpatient or day case in the Stage of Treatment (SoT) publication. The latest publication release contains data up to quarter ending 31 December 2024.

Table 1 presents the latest available statistics on the total number of attendances and admissions for patients who had waited over a year (52 weeks) as a new outpatient or an inpatient or day case. The following data are presented at NHS Scotland level for all specialties, broken down by calendar year and split by new outpatient and inpatient or day case.

Table 1 – Total number of attendances as a new outpatient and admissions as an inpatient or day case for patients who had waited over a year (52 weeks), NHS Scotland, all specialty level, by calendar year from 2020 to present.

Offshore oil and gas licensing, consenting and the associated fiscal regime are all matters that are currently reserved to the UK Government. As such, estimates of future production from North Sea oil and gas fields are a matter for the relevant UK regulator – the North Sea Transition Authority.

The Scottish Government has consistently called on the UK Government to approach decisions for North Sea oil and gas projects on an evidence-led, case by case, basis – with climate compatibility and energy security key considerations.

The iMatter Continuous Improvement Programme, which was developed by NHSScotland staff, enables the measurements of staff experience and employee engagement across all 22 Health Boards as well as participating Health and Social Care Partnerships.

This enables Health Boards to ensure that the insights and experiences of staff are captured and acknowledged, helping to influence and shape initiatives to enhance staff support.

NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their administrative assets and for identifying restructuring requirements. Any such costs would be met from Boards’ delegated budgets.

The Scottish Government is committed to the sustainability of frontline GP services and has increased the budget for General Medical Services by more than £227 million since 2020-21.

I have asked Alison Byrne, Chief Executive of NRS to respond. Her response is the National Population Projections (NPPs) for Scotland are produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on behalf of National Records of Scotland (NRS). They are based on assumptions about future levels of fertility, mortality and migration. The latest set are 2022-based and were published on 28 January. Projections are typically produced every 2 years.

The assumptions are developed by analysing trends in past and current data and taking into account advice from NPP Expert Advisory Panels, devolved administrations and, in the case of mortality assumptions, the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD).

The ONS produce a principal projection and a number of variant projections based on alternative assumptions. The information referred to below relates to the principal projection. Equivalent information for variant projections is also available from the ONS website.

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is the average number of children that a group of women would expect to have if they experienced the observed age specific fertility rates in each of their childbearing years. Projected total fertility rates (TFR) can be found in Table 1 of the Scotland summary tables. Between 2025 and 2075 these are projected to vary between 1.26 and 1.29. This compares to a TFR of 1.30 in 2023.

The same table also provides figures for Expectation of Life at Birth (EOLB) which are based on assumed projected mortality rates. EOLB is projected to rise to 83.3 years for males and 86.6 years for females by 2075. The more detailed information on the projected mortality rates on which these are based can be found in the mortality assumptions sheet within the machine readable dataset.

Projected mortality rates are based on an assumed long-term rate of annual mortality improvement in 2047 of 1.1% for ages 0 to 90 years. Mortality rates are assumed to converge to this long-term level of improvement over the first 25 years of the projection.

£1,116.7m was allocated to General Medical Services in Scotland for the financial year 2025-26, an increase of 7.1% on the previous year.

We will continue to focus on reform and improvement of the performance of our services by deploying existing resources more efficiently and effectively and working to identify funding to support actions that deliver against our reform vision. This will include measures to improve population health, to intervene earlier with preventative measures delivered through effective primary and community care services and making changes to how we deliver services that will improve quality and access.

The First Minister has committed to a greater proportion of new NHS funding going to primary and community care so that GPs and services in the community will have the resources they need for their essential role in our health system. This increased investment will result in GP services that are easier for people to access.

We will continue to invest in, strengthen and improve the performance of our NHS. The 2025-26 budget supports the expansion of primary care, including new core funding to General Medical Services to deliver enhanced frailty, cardiovascular disease and other essential services in General Practice.