We are aware of the needs of rural areas and we have been working on them for a number of years. When we set up the RAiSE programme and were looking to engage with authorities around Scotland, we deliberately chose authorities that faced challenges around rurality, including Highland, Dumfries and Galloway, and Moray.
We also recognised the big challenges of geography, and we ensured that authorities such as Highlands, Dumfries and Galloway and Fife had additional resource. For example, Highland got two RAiSE officers and Dumfries and Galloway got two or three. We are really conscious of that issue.
Through our partnership working with the RAiSE officers, we realise that it is sometimes a challenge to connect schools in rural areas with local employers. We have therefore been working in partnership with the STEM ambassador hubs in the west of Scotland and, in the past 12 months, we have increased the number of STEM ambassadors that are active in Dumfries and Galloway from 36 to 115.
We talked about the science centre model and accessing those centres. In Highland, the science skills academy is in the process of launching five Newton rooms across the area. Two have already been opened, in Thurso and Lochaber. The aim is to give those rural areas that science centre experience. The University of the Highlands and Islands has an active STEM hub that does a lot of outreach across the area, as does Aberdeen Science Centre.
Through our grants programme, we have provided funding to support Highland Council, which has big challenges with rurality and remoteness, to deliver professional learning virtually to early learning and childcare and primary staff. We hear strongly from our practitioner surveys, which give us important data, that practitioners absolutely want more support online, and that goes for practitioners in rural areas as well as those in other areas. Through the grants programme, we are trying to enhance that offer of online professional learning support.
To pick up on the point about drawing on what is available locally, this year in the grants programme, we have introduced a new funding stream called the leadership and collegiate professional learning fund. Practitioners have told us strongly that the opportunity to work with other practitioners in their schools and their clusters is really valuable and has a high impact on professional learning. For instance, 70 per cent of early learning and childcare practitioners said that working collegiately within their cluster has a high or very high impact and 81 per cent said that working collegiately within their setting has a high or very high impact. The new funding stream aims to give teachers the space and time locally to draw on their collective expertise and resources, to learn together and collaborate and to co-develop new approaches.
The rurality aspect is important. We will continue to track the issue through our surveys. Last week, we published the STEM provider survey, through which we invite all the providers across Scotland, such as the science centres, festivals and universities, to share information with us so that we can see the service or offer that has been provided to local authorities and, where we can, plug the gaps.