Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills emails regarding teacher employment: FOI Review

Information requested

Orginal Request - 202400434647

I would like to request access to email communications involving Jenny Gilruth (Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills) regarding teacher employment in Scotland.
Please provide the following:

1. Email Communications:

Copies of email correspondence between Jenny Gilruth and senior Scottish Government officials, senior politicians, or relevant stakeholders (e.g., local authorities, teacher unions, or education bodies) regarding:

• The lack of permanent teaching positions in Scotland
• The shortage of work for teachers (including supply teachers) in Scotland

I would like to limit this request to emails exchanged between 1st January 2024 and the present to reduce the scope and cost of processing.

Response

I have now completed my review of our failure to respond to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

I would like to request access to email communications involving Jenny Gilruth (Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills) regarding teacher employment in Scotland.
Please provide the following:
1. Email Communications:
Copies of email correspondence between Jenny Gilruth and senior Scottish Government officials, senior politicians, or relevant stakeholders (e.g., local authorities, teacher unions, or education bodies) regarding:

• The lack of permanent teaching positions in Scotland
• The shortage of work for teachers (including supply teachers) in Scotland

I would like to limit this request to emails exchanged between 1st January 2024 and the present to reduce the scope and cost of processing.

In accordance with section 21(4) of FOISA, I have also reached a decision on your request.

I am sorry we were unable to respond to your enquiry on time. As noted in my letter of 14 November staff ill-health meant that your request was not processed according to the usual timetable and could not thereafter be progressed timeously. I can now provide our response to your original request.

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 exemptions under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA apply to that information.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party (staff names and contact details) and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

With regard to your enquiry, you may wish to note that we understand ‘senior Scottish Government official’ to include Deputy Directors, Directors and Special Advisors, and ‘senior politician’ to include elected representatives who hold a local authority, governmental, parliamentary or political party office (e.g. a local authority leader or committee convener, a government minister or shadow minister).

About FOI

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

FOI 202400439085- Information Released - Annex

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