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The Additional Support for Learning Act places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. It is for individual authorities to determine the training required for all staff to ensure pupils reach their full potential.

All initial teacher education programmes must align with the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s Standard for Provisional Registration. The Standard sets out that student teachers are required to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of additional support needs and to take account of learners with such needs.

The Scottish Government is working closely with local government partners to improve the experience of children and young people with additional support needs at school, implementing the recommendations of the 2020 additional support for learning review, including those relating to the professional learning of school staff. In November 2022, we published an updated action plan and a second progress report . A further update is due to be published in May 2024.

The Drug Deaths Taskforce had an allocation of £9 million to invest in 2020-21 and £5 million in 2021-22.

The majority of funding allocated to the Drug Deaths Taskforce was dispersed via Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) and The Corra Foundation. The Taskforce also funded the Digital Inclusion Project.

Alcohol and Drug Partnerships received additional funding in 2020-2021 and
‎ 2021-2022 from the Drug Deaths Taskforce.In order to receive funding ADPs were required to submit a proposal, clearly setting out how they would use this funding to address gaps in delivering the Taskforce’s six evidence-based strategies to help reduce drug-related deaths. Funding allocated to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships is subject to Scottish Government’s robust grant management process, outlined in the Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM). The SPFM provides guidance on the proper handling and reporting of public funds.

Through The Corra Foundation, a Research Programme Fund and an Innovation Fund was developed by the Drug Deaths Taskforce. The Corra Foundation facilitated review panels with members from a wide range of backgrounds, including those with lived experience, to review and consider applications made to both the Research Programme Fund and the Innovation Fund. The funds were created to contribute to the evidence base to inform future actions.

Monitoring of the projects was managed by The Corra Foundation. Monitoring and evaluation were a critical element in obtaining funding. When funding was awarded, each grantee signed grant offer paperwork which contained several conditions. These included conditions around payment and reporting. The content of the grant offer letters (including the conditions) were agreed with Scottish Government for each round and new conditions added as required. Additionally, a thematic evaluation was funded by the Taskforce through the Corra Foundation.

The independent Drug Deaths Taskforce concluded in July 2022 after publishing its final report, Changing Lives . The Scottish Government then responded to the recommendations and actions put forward by the Taskforce within the Drug Deaths Taskforce response: cross government approach .

Based on Ofcom’s latest figures up to the end of January 2023, 5% of all residences in Scotland do not currently have access to a superfast broadband connection of 30 Mbps (megabits per second) or more.

Through the R100 programme, all premises without access to superfast broadband are being supported to obtain an improved broadband connection - either through inclusion in the R100 contract build plans, or via eligibility for the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme.

Some people choose not to upgrade to faster broadband speeds, even when they are available to them, with Ofcom estimating that only 71% of premises in Scotland take up superfast broadband service when it is available.

Estimates of the number of people prescribed opioid substitution therapy (OST) in Scotland are published on the Scottish Public Health Observatory website as, in spite of some data quality issues, Public Health Scotland (PHS) deem there to be a public interest in reporting this information. These statistics are published in a way that accurately describes the limitations of these data. Further, these estimates have been subject to external validation which indicates that their accuracy is good and has improved over time.

ISD (now Public Health Scotland) first published estimates of the number of people prescribed methadone for opioid dependence in 2015. The narrative accompanying these statistics states that, in spite of Community Health Index (CHI) capture being below the agreed threshold of reliability for individual-level analysis, these statistics are published due to ongoing public interest. As drug-related deaths have become an issue of growing concern, it is felt that this public interest argument continues to provide a strong reason for publication of statistics relating to prescribing for opioid dependence.

The way in which these statistics are published accurately reports the data quality issues that may affect their reliability. These statistics are published as ‘Management Information’ and the accompanying narrative describes the data quality issues and other appropriate caveats. The estimates are appropriately described as a ‘minimum number’ of people prescribed OST medications. Also, patient age and sex analysis that would typically be included for medications where CHI capture was above the agreed threshold of reliability for individual-level analysis, are not included.

Although the percentage of CHI numbers that were successfully captured from community prescriptions for OST medications in Scotland remains below the agreed threshold of reliability for individual-level analysis, there has been a substantial improvement in the quality of the underlying data over time. For the OST estimates, the CHI capture percentage increased from 64% in 2011-12 to 81% in 2021-22. As the information on ScotPHO in relation to prescribing for opioid dependence has developed, PHS have taken steps to understand how CHI capture affects the reliability of these estimates. Prior to releasing the first annual estimate of numbers of people on OST in March 2022, PHS held discussions about estimation methodologies with NHS Board prescribing leads and worked with them to agree a suitable way forward.

An analysis (also published on ScotPHO ) comparing estimates of the numbers of people on OST generated from NHS Board systems with the estimates produced by PHS shows that there was less than 1% difference between the 2020-21 total derived from local systems (29,588) and the PHS estimate (29,416). PHS continues to work with NHS Boards to improve the reliability of data on OST and any associated analyses.

The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is a privately-owned telecoms network and the decision to upgrade it has been taken by the telecoms industry. The primary focus of PSTN migration is to switch over the telephony signal from analogue to digital services, not the broadband signal. As such, delivery of the R100 programme will not be impacted by PSTN migration.

We will ensure when commissioning any modelling related to greenhouse gas emissions in the resources and waste sector, the role of biogenic carbon is considered, with a view to informing policy decisions.

The Scottish Government and SEFARI (Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutions) are currently establishing a Specialist Advisory Group to look at waste sector greenhouse gas emissions. As part of its work, the group will consider how biogenic carbon is included in future research on waste sector emissions commissioned by the Scottish Government.

Scottish Government Directors General wrote to the chief executives of most public bodies in early 2023, setting out expectations for sustainable and impactful public services. As part of this, public bodies were encouraged to consider where savings and benefits can be achieved by working together, including for example through shared approaches on estates. Public bodies have since provided feedback and we expect Directors General to write again shortly.

The Resource Spending Review re-affirmed the Scottish Government commitment to minimise cost and maximise best value in relation to the Scottish public sector estate, which includes to increase co-location, collaboration and the interoperability of offices. A new programme of public sector property improvement work, being the Single Scottish Estate, is helping with delivery of these commitments and will support publicly-funded bodies to, where appropriate, co-locate as well as with other ways to optimise the estate footprint. I wrote to Chief Executives of public bodies on 24 May to update them on this work.

The Scottish Government remains committed to reducing inequalities across all screening programmes. That is why we have supported the Equity in Screening strategy, which will give direction and focus to tackling this issue across all screening programmes. However, we also recognise that Health Boards are most often best placed to find solutions that meet the needs of their populations, and we have allocated inequalities funding since 2021-22 to support local initiatives.

This funding has played a part in a programme of work in Ayrshire and Arran to tackle inequalities of uptake in cervical screening. In particular the Health Board has developed a targeted Health Board cervical screening clinic for women who have experienced sexual violence, or who have physical disabilities; They have also run additional Saturday clinics, particularly in areas of deprivation, to increase access to screening outside working hours.

In addition, Primary Care staff have directly contacted patients who have not taken up their screening invitations to offer appointments. Further work is underway with primary care to consider outreach work for 23/24, which will specifically take into account the needs of areas with highest depravation within the Health Board.

The Scottish Government will publish the final Purpose and Principles for post-school education, research and skills [the week commencing 26 June DATE TBC].