Covid-19 education recovery group correspondence: FOI review

Information requested

Please provide a copy of all correspondence received by (a) the Scottish Government and (b) the Covid-19 Education Recovery Group on vulnerable teachers in schools since 1/08/20.

For example, I am aware that correspondence was received by theCovid-19 Education Recovery Group as referred to here: https://www.tes.com/news/vulnerable-teachers-being-treated-cannon-fodder.

Response

In accordance with section 21(4) of FOISA, I have also reached a decision on your request. I can now provide our response to your original request.

Following an investigation of the handling of your case I would like to apologise that our response to your request so significantly breached the statutory time limit. This was due to limited resourcing within the responding team at a time when there was a heightened demanded for attention elsewhere to manage and respond to the COVID-19 crisis with regard to education.

The team responsible have since taken on more resources to cope with the increased correspondences they have been experiencing and further, have initiated a regular sweep of their shared inbox for outstanding FOI requests in order to minimise future cases suffering the same lack of attention.

I sincerely apologise for your experience in receiving this information and trust that the new protocols put in place will prevent a repeat of this failure in future.

Attached is a copy of most of the information requested.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, 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 information has been marked up as [redacted – section 38(1)(b)]. 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.

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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.

FOI202100174388 - Information released

File type

98 page PDF

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3.1 MB