Cutting university places, tackling violence in schools and securing teacher numbers funding: FOI release

Information requested

1. Out of the £900k announced to tackle violence in schools, how much of it has been spent so far, and could you provide a breakdown of what this was spent on?
-https://news.stv.tv/scotland/funding-to-tackle-scottish-classroom-violence-amounts-to-360-per-school-eis-says

2. Could you provide all internal correspondence, analysis undertaken, briefings written about and minutes/notes from meetings about Scotland's Pisa scores, between December 1 2023 and February 1 2024.
-https://www.gov.scot/news/programme-for-international-student-assessment-pisa-2022-highlights-from-scotlands-results/

3. Out of the £145m announced to hand to councils to secure teacher numbers, how much of it has been spent so far, and could you provide a breakdown of what this was spent on?
-Could you also supply all correspondence surrounding this between March 1 2024 and the date of this FOI?
-https://www.gov.scot/news/protecting-teacher-numbers-and-school hours/#:~:text=The%20Scottish%20Government%20is%20providing,additional%20teachers%20and%20support%20staff.

4. Could you provide all correspondence sent to and from the Scottish Government, including internally, all analysis undertaken, briefings written about and minutes/notes from meetings about the creation of national digital academy from the last three months?

5. Has the Scottish Government collected compulsory Flexible Workforce Development Fund contributions from Scottish colleges in the last two years, and if so, could you supply a breakdown of how much has been taken in and from which college and what this money has now been spent on?

6. Could you supply all internal correspondence, briefings and analysis, minutes and notes from meetings, about cutting university places for Scottish students, and also correspondence with the government's commissioner for fair access, between January 1 2024 and the date of this FOI?

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

Part 1

With regard to Part 1, £900,000 was disbursed in full through the normal Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) mechanism.

Funding was allocated to local authorities through the General Revenue Grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. The Scottish Government does not hold a breakdown of expenditure regarding funds disbursed in 2024 for the purpose of procuring and providing training for the workforce to improve skill levels in responding to inappropriate and distressed behaviour in schools.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested.

Part 2

With regard to part 2, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600, by refining the range of information requested or narrowing the timeframe. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Part 3

With regard to the link above, funds relating to financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24 were disbursed in full through the normal Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) mechanism.

Funding was allocated to local authorities through the General Revenue Grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities. The Scottish Government does not hold abreakdown of expenditure regarding funds disbursed in 2023 and 2024 for the purpose of maintaining teacher numbers.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not does not hold the information you have requested.

Part 4

With regard to part 4, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. This could be achieved by narrowing the scope of your request by date, subject, or by choosing a particular category e.g. documents but not emails. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

However, you may wish to note that a user research insight report on the National Digital Academy has now been released in response to a review of a previous similar FOI request (202400413949). The FOI response has not yet been published on the Scottish Government website so a copy of this is included with this response for completeness.

Part 5

With regard to part 5, the Scottish Government has not collected any compulsory Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF) contributions from Scottish colleges in AY 2021/22 and 2022/23. FWDF was discontinued in academic year 2023-24.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not does not hold the information you have requested.

Part 6

With regard to part 6, I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemption under section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA apply to that information.

Exemptions under section s.30(b)(ii) (free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation) of FOISA apply to some of the information you have requested. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400416039 - Information released - Attachments 1 & 2

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