Questions and answers

Question reference: S6W-34453

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government when it anticipates that it will deliver on its commitment to allocate 10% of NHS spend to mental health and 1% to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

Question reference: S6W-34451

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has regarding co-locating social workers in schools, and how many schools have developed such hubs, broken down by (a) primary and (b) secondary school in each local authority area.

Question reference: S6W-34449

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many speech and language therapists have been employed in schools in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-34442

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many teachers have been signed off work as a result of having been attacked in school in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-34441

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many teachers have been signed off work due to mental ill health in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-34443

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
Current Status: Answer expected on 4 March 2025

To ask the Scottish Government how many shared headteacher roles have been in place in schools in each local authority area in each year since 1999.

Question reference: S6W-33299

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 30 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government whether there have been any consequences for any of its officials as a result of any investigations into any leaking of ministerial statements or other information to the media, and, if so, what the consequences were.

Question reference: S6W-33301

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 29 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the current spend per individual on palliative care by each Integrated Joint Board (IJB).

Question reference: S6W-33305

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 29 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many children and young people have been placed on part-time timetables in schools in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.

The number of pupils that have been recorded with a part-time timetable absence code for 1 or more openings (half-day sessions) in each local authority from 2018-19 is set out in the following table.

Local Authority	2018-19	2020-21	2022-23	2023-24
Aberdeen City	175	245	403	566
Aberdeenshire	263	249	522	635
Angus	122	142	229	230
Argyll and Bute	46	75	160	191
City of Edinburgh	223	527	780	986
Clackmannanshire	11	c	12	c
Dumfries and Galloway	34	87	241	619
Dundee City	46	107	164	139
East Ayrshire	219	341	572	627
East Dunbartonshire	27	100	102	138
East Lothian	122	217	250	189
East Renfrewshire	c	18	75	156
Falkirk	72	133	140	104
Fife	86	94	128	76
Glasgow City	100	215	196	350
Grant Aided	0	0	0	0
Highland	264	426	556	623
Inverclyde	46	39	76	168
Midlothian	177	274	305	442
Moray	86	164	187	186
Na h-Eileanan Siar	c	c	7	c
North Ayrshire	49	72	74	113
North Lanarkshire	148	156	253	410
Orkney Islands	16	14	36	60
Perth and Kinross	102	154	257	377
Renfrewshire	44	63	106	119
Scottish Borders	72	113	124	202
Shetland Islands	13	41	34	47
South Ayrshire	13	47	58	97
South Lanarkshire	84	201	447	389
Stirling	75	134	148	205
West Dunbartonshire	39	152	160	270
West Lothian	288	547	995	1094

c = value suppressed to protect against the risk of disclosure of personal information.

Note that information on pupils recorded with a part-time timetable code was not collected centrally by the Scottish Government before the 2018-19 school year. Two new absence codes – part-time timetable (health related) and part-time timetable (exclusion related) – were available for schools to use from the 2018-19 school year. As with any new coding, variation in the use and application of these new absence codes was identified during the quality assurance of the 2018-19 attendance and absence data. There is evidence to suggest that this is still happening, although to a lesser extent.

These part-time timetable absences are part of the ‘other authorised absence’ category for the purposes of reporting in the 2018-19 statistics onwards. The number of absences reported using these new part-time timetable codes was very small so the inclusion of them as ‘other authorised absence’ does not have a large impact on the size or quality of this category.

Furthermore, prior to 2022-23, statistics on school pupil attendance and absence were collected and published biennially. The table above sets out the number of pupils that have been recorded with a part-time timetable absence code for 1 or more openings (i.e. half day) in each school, local authority and school year. However, due to pupils moving schools’ part-way through the school year, some pupils may be double-counted within and across local authorities.

Question reference: S6W-33307

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 January 2025
Current Status: Answered by Angela Constance on 28 January 2025

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many children and young people have been reported to (a) the police, (b) social work services and (c) education support services for carrying a knife or weapon in school since 1999.

In terms of part (a), statistics on police recorded crimes of weapon possession within a school are available in the following table. Information is available from 2017-18 onwards, the first year that data was collected separately for school settings. The fall in 2020-21 will reflect the closure of schools due to the Covid pandemic. Information is not held centrally on the age of the perpetrator, so whilst it is likely the majority of these crimes in a school involve a child or young person, it is not necessarily the case for every incident.

	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21	2021-22	2022-23	2023-24
Possession of an offensive weapon in a school – not used	33	36	34	18	28	35	42
Having in a school an article with a blade or point – not used	128	91	112	56	98	112	94
Possession of an offensive weapon in a school - used	32	38	40	27	65	69	60
Having in a school an article with a blade or point - used	29	34	21	9	37	27	35
Total	222	199	207	110	228	243	231

Source: Recorded Crime Accredited Official Statistics, 2023-24

In terms of parts (b) and (c), the information requested is not held centrally.

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