Questions and answers

Question reference: S6O-03442

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 May 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 16 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government when it will next review the income threshold for free school meals for those pupils not in a year where provision is currently free.

Question reference: S6W-26977

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 7 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it has taken to decrease the time that it takes for women to obtain an endometriosis diagnosis.

We know that diagnosis time for endometriosis is not acceptable and needs to improve. We recognise the time to diagnosis is not itself an effective measurement of improved health and well-being outcomes for those living with endometriosis. It is vital that we improve care and support throughout the whole diagnosis process.

To do this we have taken a number of actions including:

Supporting the Centre for Sustainable Delivery to raise awareness and implement the Endometriosis Care Pathway for Scotland which aims to provide a holistic approach and timely care for those with endometriosis and endometriosis-like symptoms.
Increasing education among healthcare practitioners by working with NHS Education for Scotland to deliver an endometriosis masterclass session for health care professionals, covering diagnosis, treatment and current research.
Developing information on NHS Inform and working with charities such as Endometriosis UK and Young Scot to ensure that women have access to information that can support them to recognise when their symptoms might not be a normal period and enable more informed conversations with clinicians.

Question reference: S6W-26925

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 19 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of safe walking routes to schools, broken down by local authority area.

Assessment of the safety of walking routes is a responsibility of local authorities under section 51 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.

The Scottish Government expects local authorities to keep their criteria for providing school transport under review and be flexible enough to take into account factors relative to the nature of the route, which might affect pupil safety. These factors are set out in paragraph 18 of the - School Transport Guidance 2021 (www.gov.scot) .

Question reference: S6W-26926

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 19 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what recent assessment it has made of how many children currently walk or cycle to school.

Question reference: S6W-26899

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 18 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 2 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what recent assessment it has made of the number of any social care contracts that have been returned from the third or private sectors to the responsible local authority, and whether it can provide a list of any such instances, broken down by local authority, in each of the last five years.

Question reference: S6W-26922

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 19 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 2 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how it is monitoring the effectiveness of the smoke-free perimeter around hospital buildings, and how many on-the-spot fines have been issued since the Health (Tobacco, Nicotine etc. and Care) (Scotland) Act 2016 came into force.

Question reference: S6W-26927

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 19 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 2 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government how many primary schools have physical education teachers based within them, broken down by local authority.

Primary Teachers are generalists; therefore, they deliver the totality of the Curriculum including PE. Specialist PE teachers are predominantly based in secondary schools.

The table shows the number of Primary schools in each authority with teachers listing Physical Education as their main subject. Head teachers are not included.

Individual teachers may have posts in more than one school. Note that in some local authorities physical education teachers that serve more than one school are recorded as centrally employed rather than allocated to individual schools. Teachers recorded in this way do not appear in the following table.

Primary schools with teachers in post with Physical Education as their main subject taught 2023 - Excludes head teachers.

	Primary Schools with PE teachers in post
Aberdeen City	13
Aberdeenshire	18
Angus	44
Argyll and Bute	9
City of Edinburgh	25
Clackmannanshire	15
Dumfries and Galloway	3
Dundee City	0
East Ayrshire	0
East Dunbartonshire	3
East Lothian	0
East Renfrewshire	1
Falkirk	0
Fife	2
Glasgow City	2
Highland	5
Inverclyde	0
Midlothian	1
Moray	8
Na h-Eileanan Siar	0
North Ayrshire	0
North Lanarkshire	0
Orkney Islands	18
Perth and Kinross	23
Renfrewshire	1
Scottish Borders	33
Shetland Islands	21
South Ayrshire	9
South Lanarkshire	1
Stirling	0
West Dunbartonshire	0
West Lothian	16
All local authorities	271
Grant Aided	1
Scotland	272

Question reference: S6W-26661

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what work it has undertaken to encourage small and medium-size companies to consider apprenticeship places as an opportunity to grow their workforce.

Question reference: S6W-26665

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that colleges across Scotland undertake pay negotiations in the spirit of the Fair Work Framework.

As set out in the Letter of Guidance issued by the Scottish Government to the Scottish Funding Council on 29 March 2024, implementation of Fair Work First must be the guiding criteria to promote fairer work practices for staff within the college sector.

The Scottish Government expects college employers and trades unions to follow Fair Work principles and work together to reach a conclusion to the pay negotiations with a settlement which is both fair and affordable, without the need for further industrial action.

Question reference: S6W-26662

Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
Submitting member has a registered interest.
Date lodged: Wednesday, 03 April 2024
Current Status: Answered by Graeme Dey on 1 May 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that there are no compulsory redundancies within the college sector.

Operational decisions on pay and staffing matters are the responsibility of individual colleges.

The Scottish Government expects every effort to be made, in consultation with trade unions, to protect jobs. The Scottish Government has been clear that compulsory redundancies should only be considered as a last resort, after all other options have been fully explored in collaboration with trade unions.

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