Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government supports a number of measures, both local and national, to successfully tackle air pollution and its impacts on health. These measures, which are applied across the country, include the establishment of a statutory framework and clear strategic aims for both air quality and transport; supporting the development of renewable energy; providing grant funding for local authority actions; and providing advice and information through the Scottish Air Quality Website and Scotland’s Environment Web.

These initiatives will continue to be taken forward in the context of Cleaner Air for Scotland - The Road to a Healthier Future - Scotland's first distinct air quality strategy which was published in 2015. The strategy sets out six key policy objectives, including one for health which is for 'A Scotland which protects its citizens from the harmful effects of air pollution, reducing health inequalities'.

The number of practising trained educational psychologists (full time equivalent), broken down by local authority and year since 2010, is shown in the following table:

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Aberdeen City	16	20	22	22	20	15
Aberdeenshire	23	23	23	22	22	20
Angus	8	8	7	8	8	6
Argyll and Bute	9	7	7	8	6	7
Clackmannanshire	4	4	6	6	5	4
Dumfries and Galloway	11	9	9	10	9	8
Dundee City	8	10	11	10	10	9
East Ayrshire	8	9	9	9	10	11
East Dunbartonshire	8	8	7	8	8	8
East Lothian	7	8	7	7	6	6
East Renfrewshire	12	13	12	12	12	10
Edinburgh, City of	33	28	37	42	38	30
Eilean Siar	2	1	2	2	2	2
Falkirk	10	11	10	8	7	7
Fife	27	19	24	26	26	25
Glasgow City	45	46	51	46	47	46
Highland	13	12	12	10	14	11
Inverclyde	10	8	7	8	8	8
Midlothian	7	7	7	6	7	6
Moray	4	7	6	4	7	6
North Ayrshire	13	14	12	12	13	9
North Lanarkshire	28	28	28	28	27	25
Orkney Islands	3	2	2	2	2	2
Perth and Kinross	9	9	10	9	9	9
Renfrewshire	11	9	9	9	9	10
Scottish Borders	9	8	8	8	8	8
Shetland Islands	2	2	2	2	2	1
South Ayrshire	6	8	8	8	8	7
South Lanarkshire	26	25	26	25	24	23
Stirling	8	8	8	9	8	7
West Dunbartonshire	9	9	9	9	11	8
West Lothian	14	13	14	14	12	13
Scotland	401	390	411	407	405	370

 

Source: From 2012 onwards, this information is available in table 10.3 of the supplementary tables of the annual Teacher Census, http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/teachcenssuppdata

This information is not held centrally. Educational psychologists are employed directly by education authorities; it is for authorities to take decisions around the numbers they need and employ, and how they fulfil their duty to provide an educational psychology service.

The number of students offered a place for an MSc in Educational Psychology in each year since 2010 is shown in the following table.

Intake Year	University	Number of Places Offered
2016	Dundee	19
2015	Strathclyde	12*
2014	Dundee	24
2013	Strathclyde	22
2012	Dundee	24
2011	Strathclyde	24
2010	Dundee	22

Source: Data provided by the University of Dundee and University of Strathclyde.

*Note: In 2015 Strathclyde University made 17 conditional offers initially which were subsequently reduced to 12 confirmed offers.

Driving up attainment levels across Scotland’s schools is this government’s priority, and we will seek out and listen to all new ideas and innovative approaches to deliver results in education for all young people.

The summit brought together a small group of experts from across Scotland and beyond including politicians, teachers, parents, pupils and other representatives of the education sector. The purpose of the summit was to discuss the practical steps to drive forward our plans to close the attainment gap to ensure our schools are world leading. The summit discussions informed the Delivering Excellence and Equity in Scottish Education – A Delivery Plan for Scotland which I published on 28 June 2016. It sets out clear milestones for our next steps towards closing the attainment gap and can be viewed at:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Education/Schools.

The summit was attended by a number of organisations representing children’s rights and interests including the Commissioner for Children and Young People, Children in Scotland, Young Scot and Youthlink. The delivery plan is the beginning of a wider process in which we would welcome engagement with any organisation or professional wishing to contribute to raising attainment and closing the equity gap.

Progress updates on the last Mental Health Strategy are available on the Scottish Government’s website at the following link:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Health/Services/Mental-Health/Strategy

We will publish a new ten-year Mental Health Strategy later in 2016, following a further phase of public engagement. It will build on the successes of the previous Mental Health Strategy 2012 to 2015, with ongoing work on existing commitments being included where appropriate. We therefore have no plans to publish a separate report.

We will shortly begin a further phase of public engagement to inform the next Mental Health Strategy. This will involve a series of public events, together with the publication of an engagement paper on which we will seek comments. Following this public engagement, we will publish the new ten-year Mental Health Strategy later in 2016.

The Scottish Government does not collect this data centrally. All practitioners working within the early learning and childcare sector are required, as part of their training, to gain knowledge and understanding about speech and language development and are expected to undertake career-long learning to further augment the skills obtained during their initial training.

Curriculum for excellence is setting higher standards than ever before in literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing. Results from a recent Growing Up in Scotland study show improvement in three-year-olds’ vocabulary but our ambition is to close the attainment gap altogether. We will bring forward a programme of work focusing on early intervention and improving attainment. This includes the £750 million Scottish attainment fund to boost literacy and numeracy in our most deprived areas, the new national improvement framework, attainment advisers for every local authority and the raising attainment for all programme with over 50 literacy-based school projects.

The Scottish Government recognises that parents also have a key role in supporting their children’s speech and language development and we provide support through campaigns such as Play Talk Read and Bookbug.

We know that a skilled early years workforce is also key to supporting young children’s learning, and that the most disadvantaged children benefit most, which is why First Minister announced in October 2015 that nurseries in the most deprived areas of Scotland will, from 2018, benefit from an additional graduate or teacher in nurseries with early learning expertise.

We fully support the objective of increasing uptake in the Scottish Cervical Screening Programme and work has been taking place to help address the fall in cervical screening uptake rates.

Scottish Government officials meet cervical screening coordinators from all NHS boards on a quarterly basis to discuss a range of issues relating to the national screening programme, including increasing uptake of screening. NHS boards have responsibility for publicising screening within their local area and for working closely with their communities to increase screening uptake. Work of this nature is continually taking place within NHS boards. Recent local initiatives have included development of a toolkit which allows GP practices to benchmark their current practice and develop action plans to improve their uptake and an ongoing pharmacy prescription bag pilot which involves pharmacists targeting key cervical cancer screening promotional messages to those eligible to participate.

Following recent changes to the eligible age range and frequency of screening in the cervical screening programme an awareness raising campaign will soon be launched, this will aim to highlight to all women the importance of attending cervical screening and to address some of the barriers which prevent women attending. Furthermore, our on-going ‘Detect Cancer Early’ social marketing campaigns aim to raise awareness and encourage participation in the national cancer screening programmes.