Local Government Committee, 29 Jan 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Official Report 302KB pdf

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Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Records) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Okay, comrades, we can start again. We have with us once again Andy Kerr, the Minister for Finance and Public Services, and Neil Rennick, who is the head of the Executive's local government expenditure and council tax branch. We also welcome Mrs Sam Baker, who is from the pupil support and inclusion division, and Lindsey Wright, who is from the teachers and schools division of the Scottish Executive. The witnesses have been sitting at the back, so they know the drill. The minister can make an opening statement and then I will open up the meeting for questions.

The Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Records) (Scotland) Bill, as the committee knows, aims to improve access to two separate areas of education. First, it will require education authorities and independent and grant-aided schools to prepare and implement strategies to improve, over time, access to education for pupils with disabilities. That will be an important part of helping to ensure that children with disabilities get the best possible start in life and make a great contribution to our society. It is needed to help education providers to ensure that pupils with disabilities can achieve their full potential in education.

Although there are many examples of good practice throughout Scotland, there are many areas in which more work requires to be done. To include pupils with disabilities in the planning process, we need to remove barriers to participation in schools and nursery schools across Scotland and to ensure that pupils can really benefit from mainstream education.

The bill is linked to the new duties in the amended Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which will come into force throughout Great Britain in September. Those duties will make it unlawful for education authorities to discriminate against any child on grounds of disability. The requirements for accessibility strategies will complement and support that because the bill will require responsible bodies to take positive action in planning for the future of all pupils with disabilities in all the education establishments for which they are responsible.

In addition to the £9 million that is being provided by general grant in 2003-04, ring-fenced funding through the excellence fund inclusion programme will increase from £14.3 million this year to £19.5 million by 2003-04. We expect the majority of the inclusion programme resources to go towards establishing and implementing councils' accessibility strategies.

It might be helpful if I place the additional funding in the context of our other work. Local authorities already allocate significant resources to assist the pupils who will be covered by the bill. That includes provision from their £240 million annual revenue expenditure on special education and more than £2 billion of annual mainstream expenditure in primary and secondary schools. During 2000-01, local authorities invested around £130 million from the single capital allocations into schools. The additional support that we have announced for school refurbishment will generate an additional £500 million of investment into the school estate.

I expect that, in directing the existing expenditure, local authorities are already considering the needs and interests of all pupils, including those with disabilities. The bill and the additional funding that we are providing will help to focus local authorities' existing activities and expenditure to promote accessibility through structural adaptations, training or equipment. Consideration will be given in the forthcoming spending review to funding beyond 2003-04.

The bill will also enable us to reinstate an independent right for parents in Scotland to access their children's school records. Parents were given that right in 1990, but it was unintentionally removed in March 2000 when the Data Protection Act 1998 came into force and extended data protection legislation to manual files as well as electronic files. Therefore, in the second part of the bill, we want to create the powers necessary to enable us to reinstate that right. We acknowledge that there may be some information in a child's record that should remain confidential and we will ensure that children's rights to confidentiality are protected in accordance with the 1998 act. However, we believe that, in general, parents should be able to access information about their children that is held by schools and education authorities.

I will kick off with a question about funding. You said that you have an additional £9 million from the GAE for the financial year 2003-04 that would be allocated if the bill is implemented. How will that be distributed among Scotland's local authorities? Is there a system by which a council's education department could ask for extra funding for a specific service, such as Braille, which is particularly expensive?

I will answer one of your questions and pass the other one to Sam Baker. Resources are allocated through the GAE and the allocation is based on school populations. That has been discussed with and approved by COSLA.

It is for local authorities to provide Braille and any other extra provision that they want to put in place as a result of the bill from their share of the £9 million or any other funding that they have for accessibility strategies.

Minister, the financial memorandum states that the provisions in the bill that relate to parents' access to pupils' records will not result in any additional costs to local authorities. How did you arrive at that conclusion?

The administrative demands of providing that access are nothing new because the ability to access the information existed until it was inadvertently removed in March 2000 as a result of the Data Protection Act 1998. That suggests that reinstating the provision of access will not have any significant impact on the demand for that service or mean that there is any significant additional cost. We will remain in close contact with local authorities and consult them on the situation.

If there are additional costs, have you any plans to ensure that they are not passed on to those who seek access to the records?

The regulations will allow a fee to be charged for the issuing of copies, but we thoroughly expect that any charge will cover only the cost of supply and that charging for access to pupils' records will not be done on a for-profit basis—that might have been what your question was leading to.

Constituents have come to me with differing views about the best way of educating children with autism. That led me to think that there might be a need to make local authority staff aware of recent research and methods of working with children with certain mental disabilities. Has that issue been taken on board, particularly with regard to the allocation of funds?

I share your views. Many innovative practices are being developed with regard to autism; some local authorities have taken those innovations up whereas others have not. I will be interested to hear what Sam Baker has to say on the subject, but my view is that those local authorities are making decisions based on what they think is the right way of delivering a service. Of course, there are differences of opinion. For example, I am involved with a local autism group that does not agree with the local authority's view. However, it is not the job of the Scottish Executive to tell local authorities how to deal with such issues.

I should expand my point slightly, as I think that you might have picked up what I said wrongly. I do not mean to be negative about local authorities. As a former teacher trainer, I am aware that teachers face many difficulties because they have not been trained to deal with autism, for example. The issue must also be a problem for local authority staff, which is why I suggested that they should be kept abreast of on-going research.

Local authorities are committed to providing that training, within the constrictions imposed by the resources that are allocated and the other funds that they can access. The issue comes back to the setting of local priorities: if that training is judged to be a local priority, it can be delivered. However, I would argue that training needs are addressed by the various resources that I mentioned in my opening remarks.

The minister touched on the resources that are already available. The special educational needs grant for in-service training gives local authorities funding to provide teachers, auxiliary staff and other staff with training on autism and on other special educational needs and disabilities. Clearly, accessibility strategies have a role in promoting awareness about disability among pupils and staff. As the field of autism develops, there will be a lot more staff training needs, which local authorities will want to consider when they prepare and implement those strategies.

I am interested in the costs of the long-term strategies. The submission explains that the £9 million increase in GAE will be delivered at the beginning and then explains about what will happen in 2003-04. I have concerns about what might happen after 2004 if local authorities are perhaps not up to scratch. What will happen in 2005, say, if local authorities are still looking for funds because schools have not been adapted? The submission mentions that consideration is being given to funding beyond 2003-04. Can you guarantee that money will be made available to carry out any work that has not been completed?

We are providing money incrementally so that we can deal with some of the issues, but I do not think that we will easily solve the problems of every school and local authority building. I cannot go beyond the next spending review, but those projects will form part of the next bidding process and will be discussed at that point. There is an understanding that we need to put money into the system. That is being done and requires to be done under the DDA. We need to continue that process, which will become part of the spending review in future years. Perhaps one of my colleagues can add to that.

The £9 million will be part of the local government baseline and will not be time limited. It will be like other elements of the baseline local government settlement.

Sandra White's question was about what would happen if the £9 million was not enough. We would need to re-examine the situation on the basis of what happens.

I know that no one can pre-empt the spending review, but could consideration be given to local authorities that had fulfilled the criteria and that found themselves short in the last six months of the year? Perhaps you could look at that.

We constantly engage with local authorities. Clearly, we need to discuss seriously with them any legislative requirement that has been imposed on them. Let us see the outcome of the current increase, which we hope will provide adequate resources to do the job.

To a large extent, the funding for the access improvements will come from the inclusion programme. In light of our earlier discussions on ring fencing, why have you chosen to use the inclusion programme route rather than add the additional resources to the local government grant?

In our discussion under the previous agenda item, we said that we need to ensure that the resources get to where they are required. The resources to do the job are being promoted through the excellence fund because that seemed an appropriate vehicle to use. I do not know what discussions took place in partnership with local authorities, as the decision was made before my time. The social inclusion agenda, which is being supported through the provision of resources, seemed an appropriate way of closing the gap and of ensuring that the improvements take place. I presume that that was why that route was chosen, but perhaps my colleagues can comment.

The inclusion fund money already supports accessibility. The spending review identified that the excellence fund would grow. As part of our general commitment to reduce hypothecation, it was agreed that the additional £9 million in year three should be provided through the general non-hypothecated grants system. The inclusion funding is part of the excellence fund, which is being reviewed, but the commitment has been made that the resources will carry forward. We hope that local authorities will continue to allocate funds for this area.

Does the overall funding take account of the particular difficulties that remote areas experience in ensuring a level playing field for children with disabilities? For authorities that have sparse populations and small schools, the relative provision costs might be higher than in more urban areas.

The determining figure in allocating GAE resources was school population. I am not sure whether the system has other nuances, but Neil Rennick may know more.

The relative demands for special educational needs have been discussed with local authorities. There was no agreement on any amendment to the way in which the GAE system is applied. Obviously, if local authorities have alternative suggestions at the next spending review, those suggestions will go into the pot for consideration.

I want to ask about a related issue and how it fits into the bill. The Parliament has discussed special educational needs schools and extending the school day—for children for whom that is appropriate—so that it is the same in those schools as in mainstream schools. As a result, guidance has been issued to local authorities to encourage them to make progress with that. Does the bill cover special needs schools? Is that mentioned in the guidance that local authorities have received?

That is a detailed question and I can answer only one part—yes, the bill covers special needs schools. I will leave the substantive answer to Sam Baker.

Special schools are covered in the same way as mainstream schools are. There is more work to be done with mainstream schools, especially as a result of section 15 of the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000, which includes a presumption in favour of mainstreaming. Obviously, special schools will still have a role to play, because a number of children have more complex difficulties. Special schools will also require accessibility developments.

The Executive encourages local authorities to achieve an equal length of school week in special schools and mainstream schools. Guidance has been—or is about to be—issued on that. Local authorities must take reasonable steps—not because of the bill, but because of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995—to provide children in special schools with the same education as children in mainstream schools.

So if local authorities do not make progress with extending the school day for pupils when appropriate, the bill will not force them to do so, but the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 will.

A special school might be the subject of a challenge under the 1995 act if someone could prove that it had not taken reasonable steps to ensure that the school week in the school was in line with that in mainstream schools.

Your submission says that the Executive will define, in guidance, associated services to be covered by the disability strategy. That guidance will be published later this year. What are those services? Have their costs been included in moneys that have been allocated for the requirements of the bill?

On a similar theme, have you considered whether there will be extra-curricular activities—sports, for example—in the evening or during the day, which may require extra money? What will happen during school holidays? Have you considered play schemes for younger children? If such initiatives are to apply to disabled children and able-bodied children alike, there will be extra costs. Have those costs been included in the £9 million, which, it seems, will stretch all over the place?

I have focused on the financial issues, but I see that Sam Baker has a big list in front of her, so it is probably more appropriate for her to answer your question.

To define associated services, we would use the list of services that is in the Disability Rights Commission's code of practice, which will be published shortly. Associated services would include preparation for entry into a school, the curriculum, teaching and learning, classroom organisation, timetabling, grouping of pupils, homework, access to school facilities, activities to supplement the curriculum—such as a drama group visiting a school—school sports, school policies, breaks and lunch times, serving of school meals, interaction with peers, assessment and exam arrangements, school discipline and sanctions, exclusion procedures, school clubs and activities, school trips, schools' arrangements for working with agencies and preparation of pupils for the next phase of education. That list is wide-ranging and includes extra-curricular activities and trips, which you mentioned.

There are no more questions, so I thank the witnesses for attending. You can go home now.

I wish.

I welcome Councillor Helen Law, who is COSLA's education spokesperson and a member of Fife Council, and Maggi Allan, who is an executive director for education resources at South Lanarkshire Council. They have been watching the meeting. We will have a few words from the councillor, then members will ask questions.

COSLA welcomes the bill in principle. Local authorities have a good record in looking after the needs of all children, especially those with disabilities. However, we are concerned about the bill's financial implications. We need clarity on the future of funding and guarantees on flexibility and the ability to roll out programmes over time. COSLA has given the committee a written submission.

I note what you say about the amount of grant that will be provided in the first year and the need to clarify future funding. Is £9 million enough?

On its own, £9 million will not be enough. Maggi Allan will give details on how the funding breaks down for local authorities and on the funding that would be required, down to pricing exact programmes, such as those for stairlifts.

South Lanarkshire Council has undertaken some work on the bill's implications and I have obtained information from another council to find out whether the figures that my council produced were reasonable. The figures that I received from Renfrewshire Council concurred with our findings.

It was reassuring to hear much of what the Minister for Finance and Public Services said this afternoon about the increase in the excellence fund for inclusion and about the £9 million. However, I will put that figure in context for the committee. For an authority such as South Lanarkshire Council, which has 124 primary schools and 21 secondary schools, this year's inclusion fund is worth about £800,000 from the excellence fund. Our allocation of the £9 million will be £600,000. With the increase of the excellence fund plus that £600,000, in the forthcoming years we will be looking at a figure in the region of £1.6 million or £1.7 million. I ask you to bear that figure in mind as I run through some of the costings that we have undertaken for South Lanarkshire Council.

We have considered only primary schools in our costings. In the PPP bid that we submitted to the Executive in December, we dealt with our 21 secondary schools to ensure that all our secondary provision complied with the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the requirements of the bill. However, we also have 124 primary schools, 40 of which require lifts. On a modest estimate of the cost of the installation of a lift, for us to bring those schools up to standard would cost £3.2 million. For the 114 schools that have been identified as requiring access improvements—ramps, handrails and adapted toilets—the costings would total about £5.5 million. We estimate that around £10,000 per school would also be required to improve our 10 relatively new schools, which will add a further £100,000 to the costs. Finally, it would cost a further £1.5 million to make our schools appropriate for youngsters with visual and hearing impairments.

Taking the rounded figures—whether rounded up or down—for primary education, we are talking about a figure in the region of £9.5 million to £10 million. Renfrewshire Council is a much smaller authority, with 52 primary schools and 12 secondary schools. Nevertheless, the director in Renfrewshire estimates that around £10 million to £10.5 million would be required to make primary and secondary schools there compliant. Although COSLA and local authorities welcome the bill—as Councillor Law said, local authorities have a good track record in working to make both the physical environment and the curriculum accessible to young people with disabilities—it is only appropriate that the committee is aware of the bill's potential cost implications.

On funding and the Executive's approach, COSLA and local authorities would like two issues to be clarified. First, will the £9 million be recurring funding or one-off funding? I am not sure about the response that the Executive official gave this afternoon. I understood that the money is going into baseline GAE, in which case it will be recurring. If that is the case, it will be good news. However, the financial memorandum that accompanies the bill does not imply that the funding is recurring.

My second point is to do with the extent to which, in recognising the cost implications, the Executive might agree—perhaps through the guidance—to allow for some flexibility in the time scale for the implementation of the bill. The minister accepted the fact that implementation could not take place overnight. Local authorities are looking for flexibility and a reasonable articulation of a time scale.

I understand that the £9 million is baseline funding. I am sure that that is how the Executive official answered, but we can check the Official Report. I am sure that there will be flexibility.

You say that you put in a bid to the Executive for PPP funding for your secondary schools. At the moment, that is sitting out there and you have not received an answer about whether you are going to get the funding.

No.

If you did not get it, your implementation costs would change.

Indeed.

You implied that some of the modifications would be necessary anyway, because of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Is that correct? I am trying to clarify whether the bill will add extra costs or whether most of those costs would have to be met in any case.

Several pieces of legislation and parts of codes of practice all come together in that regard: the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000, which contains a presumption of mainstream education; the recent code of practice on special educational needs; and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. If the bill is passed there will be a requirement concerning disability strategies. As the minister said, it is important that those strategies complement the existing legislation. The expectation is that councils will, through their disability strategies, articulate how they will meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. As local authorities commit to implementing the terms of the 1995 act, we need to be able to show clearly that we will not achieve that overnight; we will commit to achieving it over time and based on the allocation of resources. The various acts and codes of practice complement one another.

That was helpful. I also wish to ask you about sparsity of population and remote communities. Does the distribution formula take sufficient account of the larger number of schools per pupil in remote areas? If not, the costs of making adaptations might be higher. Costs would not be affected by a pupil-based scheme. Has that been taken into account? Would extra resources be required in remote areas?

That is quite an important issue for rural areas, particularly because of the distance that young people must travel. It is a question of flexibility. For example, in the East Kilbride area, where schools are relatively close to one another, I might tell a parent that I cannot provide full accessibility in one secondary school, but that there is a suitable school six miles along the road. However, if I were the education director of the Highland Council, it would be a completely different matter; the appropriate school might be 20 or even 30 miles down the road. That would be much more problematic for a council that was faced with implementing legislation and for parents who are anxious to secure their children's inclusion rights. Therefore, it might not be unreasonable to consider rurality as a factor in the distribution of funds.

The committee is always worried about the hidden costs that might be involved in financial settlements. We notice that "other services" will be included in guidance that will come out later this year. Has COSLA costed the potential financial implications of including additional educational services under "other services"?

We have not costed those implications in detail. Our main costings have concerned making the physical environment accessible. We welcome the fact that the bill is not just about making the physical environment accessible, but about making the full curriculum accessible. It is also about extending beyond the formal school day the provision that is available to all young people. Costs are, and will be, associated with that.

If a young person needs a school helper or an SEN auxiliary during the school day to access the curriculum, it is highly probable that the young person will also require that helper's services to access extra-curricular activity. A cost will be associated with that. We have not begun to cost such provision, but the issue is worth considering. Although the £9 million allocation is recurring—which is good—if it is used only to make schools' physical environments accessible, that will not address how to make other activities, especially post-school activities, accessible.

Another element of access relates to pupil records. The minister seemed fairly confident that no additional costs could be passed on to those who seek access to the records. Are you as confident that that would be the case?

We probably are as confident. The minister is correct. We used always to grant access to pupil records. From speaking to colleagues in other authorities, I know that we have not stopped doing that, although the Data Protection Act 1998 took away the legal requirement for us to do so. If parents ask us for records, we still provide them, but an administrative cost is generally associated with that. I concur with the minister's conclusion.

How often are you asked to provide records?

Such requests are not frequent. On average, they are made two or three times a year.

Thank you for your submission, which answered a number of the questions that I intended to ask. Funding is one of the most important issues raised by the bill. We all want the bill to work, but we must be realistic. Your concerns have been taken on board.

In your submission, you express concern not only about building and revenue costs, but about issues such as class sizes. I want to ask you about flexibility in the use of the £9 million that has been allocated to local authorities to implement the provisions of the bill. Would it be wise and prudent of the Executive to ask each council what flexibility it needs in the schools in its area? As you said, the bill could have an effect on class sizes. Would producing a plan have extra cost implications for councils?

I do not think that the drafting of a plan would involve additional costs. However, it would be helpful for the Executive to liaise closely with local authorities on the implementation of their strategies. That could be secured by involving COSLA in the drafting of guidance, in order to build in a requirement for consultation. Local authorities would then be assured that their needs were being considered.

Clearly, every authority will come to the issue from a different starting point. The age and condition of properties will obviously be a factor. Sandra White is right to say that it will be important for the needs of individual local authorities to be considered. We should not expect all accessibility strategies to look the same, which is why COSLA is saying that flexibility would be helpful.

I want to return to staff development. Obviously, staff development does not have the same financial implications as the physical improvements that you described. However, do you agree that the issue needs to be considered? Through changes to teacher training, staff development will work its way through the system but, initially, extra staff development will be needed for teachers, classroom assistants and so on.

I was also trying to highlight earlier the fact that council staff in education departments—possibly at quite senior levels—might need to know more about certain issues. I referred to autism, but the same is true of other conditions. Will you comment on that?

I agree that professional development issues are associated with the bill. We need to make people aware of the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, as people could inadvertently fall foul of that legislation. You are right to say that we need to ensure that local authority officials are familiar with the terms of the 1995 act.

The growth in the number of people in mainstream schools who have special educational needs or disabilities has created a need for disability awareness training. It is important that teachers' expectations of young people who have disabilities are not too low and that they recognise that disabilities do not necessarily impair intellectual capabilities. There is much work to do in that area. I know that there are particular concerns about autism, because increasing numbers of autistic children are coming into mainstream schools and in the past their needs were under-resourced.

It is right to say that as more young people who suffer from autistic spectrum disorder come into mainstream schools, not only teachers, but all the support staff in schools come into contact with those young people.

COSLA's written submission states the belief that

"the needs of the individual child are paramount".

I am sure that you would not challenge that, but how can individual children's needs be made paramount in the context of the bill?

The presumption of mainstreaming is all very well, but we need to be mindful that some parents would still want specialised facilities for their young people. In trying to meet the needs of young people, we need to talk to the parents and the professionals and to work together to ensure that we do not create another kind of one-size-fits-all solution.

In paragraph 6 of the written submission, you make some useful points about areas that might need clarification or future guidance. You mentioned preventing duplication of work. Will you comment on the sort of areas in which the bill might cause duplication or conflict such as, for example, the children's services plan and the Children (Scotland) Act 1995?

We are being asked to prepare an accessibility strategy. We will consider how that fits with our other requirements, such as the requirement for local authorities to have an annual local improvement plan, the requirement to have a plan associated with the children's services plan and the forthcoming legislative requirement around community planning. We can join all those things up. We anticipate dealing with the accessibility strategy in particular through a children's services planning process.

We have exhausted our questions. Thank you for coming along. We will be in touch, if necessary.

We welcome Margaret Orr, who is Glasgow City Council's senior education officer. After you have said a few words, I will invite questions.

I have two main introductory points. My specific responsibility in Glasgow City Council is for special educational needs. I have a particular interest in aspects of the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Records) (Scotland) Bill. I expected to be accompanied by a colleague who has more knowledge of the buildings aspect, but unfortunately that person is on sick leave. I will attempt to answer questions, but I will get back to the committee on any matter about which I am unsure.

Our submission was relatively brief, because I expected to elaborate in response to questions. Glasgow City Council is in a unique situation because we are almost within sight of the conclusion of our secondary review. We have 29 refurbished or new-build secondary schools. All those schools certainly comply with current statutory requirements and some comply fully with the recommendations and requirements in the bill.

Glasgow City Council's big challenge is its primary school stock. We have 202 such buildings, as well as 32 buildings in the special needs sector. Our submission focused on access to those buildings. The cost of best-value reviews in the SEN and primary sectors amounted to £40,000 and £400,000 respectively—purely for dilapidation surveys. On that basis, we estimated that a full accessibility survey of our schools could cost in the region of £100,000.

To date, local authorities have been fortunate in that moneys have come from the excellence fund, which has facilitated the meeting of many requirements in the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000. It is important that we record our gratitude for the excellence fund, which has facilitated access.

Members asked questions about curriculum and staff development. I am happy to elaborate on those issues, if members would find that helpful.

Glasgow City Council tries as much as possible to facilitate disabled access within the constraints of the budget. We might spend about £100,000 annually to facilitate access at the most local level for children in primary schools. All our special educational needs establishments are one or two-storey buildings and therefore need disabled access. The main purpose of two of the schools in the city is to meet the needs of children who have severe physical disabilities and associated medical conditions—perhaps that is another area of interest to the committee. Members will appreciate that disabled access is not simply about installing a ramp or a lift and that, for children who have more complex medical needs, it will always be impossible to provide resources on an individual school basis. We have had detailed discussions with health officials on that as part of our best-value review of special needs.

We are proud of—and continue to develop—provision in schools such as Richmond Park School and Ashcraig School, which also serve children from outwith Glasgow. It is also interesting that Glasgow City Council is a main provider for almost 200 children who come into Glasgow for special needs provision. That links directly to authorities' past difficulties in providing access. Certainly, Ashcraig School has a healthy roll at secondary level. Developments in other local authorities have changed matters to an extent. Other children in Ashcraig School have more complex medical needs associated with their physical disabilities.

Section 2c of our submission touches on more subtle issues of access relating to blind or visually impaired children and children who have other sensory impairments. It is a big task to make people aware that we should not take just physical disabilities into account. In the new Ross Hall academy—which will take over from the Penilee visually impaired unit—detailed work has had to be done with architects and builders to ensure not only that the unit in which the sensory-impaired young children will spend a core part of their education is sensory-impairment friendly, but that the whole school is. The whole building has been considered. Knightswood Primary School has just opened and is also sensory-impairment friendly. Account has been taken of different colour shadings on the walls, routing round the walls for blind and visually impaired children and sensory-impairment sensitive rooms.

Addressing the issue of disabled access is welcome. The matter is complex and subtle, and crude costings never achieve the final result. A lot of refinement is needed.

Like all other authorities, in our department service plan we prioritise in the capital programme. Due to resources and budget implications, certain things cannot be done and, if there are a few days with weather like yesterday's, some things cannot be done because people's roofs must be put back on.

Although we are the largest authority, the issues that we face are not unique but, for Glasgow, volume is often the problem. We are also a provider for many children from outwith the authority area.

I will be happy to try to answer questions.

In the first year, it appears that £9 million will be made available, based on school population. I would like to clarify something. You said that more than 200 pupils come into Glasgow and use the facilities—other authorities obviously buy in that provision. Are those children included in your school population? Must members of the school population have a Glasgow address?

No. All school pupils are included in the population.

So there will be £9 million for the whole of Scotland and the distribution of that money will be based on school population. Is that amount enough? Be honest.

No. The amount is not enough if we are to address the more subtle issues. It might be enough if we were talking simply about building ramps and, perhaps, installing lifts. The last estimate that I had for installing a lift, which was in my Renfrew days, was for £150,000. That was six years ago. I doubt that £9 million is enough if we are truly serious about ensuring access for any child who appears at the front door of a school. I would still except the medical profiles. The £9 million would give us a good start, but it would not finish the job.

I return to Maggi Allan's idea that provision would have to be phased in. Could you work the system so that two or three schools were adapted and then phase in provision gradually in other schools? Is that your intention? What sort of strategy might you use?

That is our strategy. If the required customisation were too great, we would transport the children to the nearest school that could meet their needs. However, that would depend greatly on the provision in individual cases.

The rolling programme would probably be adequate, provided that it adapted two schools per year. A lot would depend on the stock. Glasgow City Council would like to have fewer than 202 schools—we have too many. Even then, we would have almost 150 schools.

On parental expectation, we would have to be clear that the rolling programme would be fulfilled. A lot of energy is spent in discussion with individual parents, reassuring them and explaining to them that we will carry out minor adaptations. That is usually within the budget, but it takes a lot of discussion. If we were producing a phased-in game plan, the fulfilment date would certainly have to be clear and not be merely a wish to adapt all the schools in 50 or 60 years.

On the disability strategies and the information that you give to parents, are you saying that, right from the beginning, you would have to be open and transparent about what is possible so that unrealistic expectations are not built up? I think that you agree with me about that.

Yes, definitely.

Will you comment on the implications of the review of the disability strategies? I asked a previous witness what that would mean for training at the school level, the council level and in education departments.

There are probably three tiers. We have begun a rolling programme. It is essential that directorate members and council officials are well briefed on those issues. The approach is holistic: all council offices, officers and personnel should develop broad awareness of the strategy.

For education departments, the implications hit home in schools. I echo what Maggi Allan said: not only teachers need training. As inclusion develops, all staff—school librarians, janitors, cleaners—will be required to be aware of the implications of the strategy. However, some people might be in default through ignorance and others might not recognise that that is part of their responsibility.

How we deliver that training is another issue. Because I also have responsibility for training, I think that there is an interesting tension; we have requirements in law but do not necessarily have a requirement that insists that everybody must undertake training. Training will be patchy. Some people will receive training because a disabled child—in the simplest sense of that phrase—will appear at the school and something will have to be done. Others will have an innate interest. Others will be special needs assistants or specialists in some area.

A delicate balance must be struck. The matter must be addressed in continuing professional development to ensure that all teachers and support staff take it as read that they need to be aware and know how to respond appropriately in their roles. The issue is very big. It is facilitated by access to the SEN specific grant, which complements the excellence fund. Authorities therefore have the scope to provide training.

The other issue is that training is necessary not only for education personnel. There is much evidence in favour of interdisciplinary training, which is encouraged by central Government and local government and by our professional bodies, whether in speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, social work services or elsewhere. That holistic approach is necessary. It would be rare to find a child who has a disability who does not have access to a range of services. We should all be aware of the issues.

It all seems to come down to funding. Although you might have the will, you also need the money. The Executive has mentioned the inclusion programme and the ring fencing of moneys. How much did Glasgow City Council receive last year?

We got £1.5 million and roughly £500,000 for training. Obviously, the focus of that money was on developing practice and provision in the mainstream sector. We struck a balance. We met costs for access and adaptations, but the vast majority of the money was focused on the process model and on staff development, whether that involved direct training, staff development materials, inter-agency working or the establishment in some of our mainstream schools of better provision for children with special educational needs.

In some areas, such as sensory or communication disorders and speech and language, we reinforced the potential for specialist units to have direct contact with mainstream schools. Inclusion is not simply about children being in mainstream schools; specialist services have a great role to play. As I said, Glasgow is proud of its range of special schools and we would not want to close them. We have to develop a stronger partnership so that specialist services can support and facilitate mainstream practice.

We were grateful for the money and are keeping our fingers crossed that funding will continue.

Everyone is grateful for a wee bit of extra money. You have explained how you used that money for various other aspects of provision that do not appear to be included in the bill. Would £1.5 million be enough to cover the remit of the bill in future years?

I felt that the funding addressed some elements of the bill—some of the more subtle aspects of inclusion and responding to disability. If I were guided to spend all of the £1.5 million simply on physical access, that would disappoint me. We have not taken that approach in Glasgow. It would have been easy to run around flinging ramps at every school and putting in disabled toilets. The greater priority for us is to ensure that staff are well trained, in tune and sympathetic to the issues. No child is being disadvantaged. Children are accessing education, so a physical disability does not deprive them of education. Provision may not currently be as local as we would like, but no child's educational provision is being undermined in any way by the lack of physical access in schools.

I would prefer to keep a balance, with some of the money being dedicated to physical adaptation. A one-injection shot for staff development over a couple of years will get us nowhere. The process is on-going and we look forward to continuing it.

I assume that you hope that the Executive and COSLA will take on board what you have said and that consultation and flexibility on how the money is spent will be written into the bill.

We want flexibility to be coupled with accountability. The requirement to show in great detail how money from the specific grant and the excellence fund is being spent is welcome. It is too easy just to take a broad-brush approach. Funding has been specifically targeted and sensitive to local need, which has been much appreciated, not only in Glasgow but by colleagues in other local authority areas.

My first question is for clarification. Your answer will determine what my second question will be. In how many of the schools in Glasgow that are currently being built or renovated has access for people with physical disabilities been taken into account?

We have 29 secondary schools in Glasgow, 26 of which have total access, with lifts and ramps. The three schools that do not have those facilities are not new-builds but refurbishments. Apparently, in those three schools, the traditional style of the building prohibited the inclusion of those access facilities. We recognise that, when the bill becomes law, we will have to revisit that situation.

Among the secondary schools, there will be schools with specific provision for children with sensory impairment, from visual impairment through to blindness and from slight hearing impairment through to deafness. There will be two different schools, both of which will be specifically customised to meet those needs. We also have one school for children with communication disorder. Again, specific adaptations have been made to address their needs and those of children with speech and language difficulties. Those needs were taken into account in planning new-builds and refurbishments.

The answer was positive, so I do not need to ask why the work has not been done. Do you have an idea how much additional funding was required to deliver that level of provision?

I asked that question this morning but nobody could give me a breakdown of the funding. The new primary school, Knightswood Primary School, started off its life at an estimated cost of £3.5 million but ended up costing £4.6 million as a result of refinements. There is a proposal for another school, Lourdes Primary School, which will be a two-storey building with lifts and disabled access throughout and customised toilets. That finer brief will add to the cost and result in a building that will cost more than a basic primary school would cost.

There is provision in the bill for access to pupils' records. The minister said that that should have no great financial implications. Do you agree with that?

Yes. I also agree with Maggi Allan that good practice has dictated for a long time that information should be made available to parents. For example, there has always been open access to the record of needs. With a bit of professional rigour, no one should have anything to fear from access to records.

I do not think that we have any more questions. Thank you for attending.