Special Educational Needs
Good morning. We begin today with the Education, Culture and Sport Committee debate on motion S1M-1931, in the name of Karen Gillon, on special educational needs. I call Irene McGugan to speak to and move the motion on behalf of the committee.
I am neither the convener nor the vice-convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, but it is my pleasant duty to introduce this report to the Parliament on the committee's behalf.
The committee agreed in November 1999 that one of its earliest inquiries should focus on special educational needs. The terms of reference of the inquiry were deliberately broad. We wanted to examine the diversity of special needs education provision throughout Scotland; to investigate the effectiveness of current integration strategies at all levels of pre-school and school education; to investigate the effectiveness of transition arrangements for special needs pupils at each stage in the school education system; and to consider how effectively the requirements of families with special needs children are understood and fulfilled by education services.
In response to our request for written evidence, we received 150 submissions, including some from parents. Those submissions were followed up with oral evidence sessions and visits to 11 mainstream and special schools that offered a range of provision. Committee members who took part in those visits found them to be one of the most influential and meaningful aspects of the inquiry, largely because of the input of children, their parents and teachers. The committee appointed Dr Julie Allan as its adviser for the duration of the inquiry, and we express our gratitude to Dr Allan, who provided advice and helped with the drafting of the report, as did the clerks. We record our thanks to Gillian Baxendine and David McLaren, who have both moved on, and to Martin Verity and Ian Cowan, who have not.
We acknowledge the contributions of previous members of the committee: former convener Mary Mulligan, Kenneth Macintosh, Lewis Macdonald, Jamie Stone, Nicola Sturgeon and Fiona McLeod. We also thank for their brief contributions Johann Lamont, Cathy Jamieson and Margaret Ewing. If the inquiry had not been suspended for several months at the end of last year, to allow the committee to deal with the urgent matter of problems surrounding the certification of school examination results, perhaps some of the original committee members could have seen the inquiry to its conclusion. I do not believe that the outcome would have been any different.
What were our findings? In our view, education in mainstream schools can become a realistic option for the majority of children with special educational needs. That goal can be achieved while maintaining the option of special school placements for those with the most significant needs. During our inquiry, major concerns emerged over the current system for meeting special educational needs. Evidence that we received highlighted the inadequacy of training for school staff; the lack of support and information for parents and children; and problems associated with the record-of-needs procedures for assessing pupil requirements. In our report, we acknowledge the Scottish Executive's commitment to children with special educational needs and their parents, through the establishment of Enquire, the national SEN information and advice service; through support for the national SEN training and co-ordination project; and through its commitment to review assessment and recording procedures.
Our recommendations take account of those factors and developments and try to identify the changes that would be necessary to achieve an inclusive education system for all children. Central to that process should be the maximising of the participation of all children with special needs in mainstream schools. We are aware that much work will need to be done, especially in staff development and training, to prepare the teaching profession for the challenges that it will face. We have also been guided by the belief that parental involvement is crucial in addressing the problems of children with special needs, and that there must be an element of choice in provision.
The committee report makes 19 detailed recommendations, all of which are important, although I have time to mention only a few. First, the committee concluded, from evidence that was presented to it, that inclusion is preferable to integration, although there is a lack of clarity about what that means in practice. The committee proposed a definition of inclusive education:
"Maximising the participation of all children in mainstream schools and removing environmental, structural and attitudinal barriers to their participation."
We believed that mainstream schools
"should ensure that all policies and practices are inclusive."
Other members will speak on that issue, as it is fundamental to the debate and because definitions can be problematic.
Another key recommendation is:
"Additional resources should be made available for the more widespread provision of information, advice and training for parents (which is independent from schools, authorities and the Scottish Executive) and for the establishment of informal parents support networks."
Overwhelming evidence confirms that the national advisory forum for special educational needs, in its review of record-of-needs procedures, should consider the options of
"either replacing the system or revising it substantially."
We note that the consultation document "Assessing our children's educational needs" has been launched to begin that process. The view of most of those who are involved in the process is that the system had become cumbersome; was driven by the availability of resources; was divorced from the views of the child; and was inconsistent between authorities. The committee identified the characteristics that any future system for assessing needs should have. They include:
"Initiation of the assessment at the earliest possible stage and with shorter time limits for the completion of the assessment process.
Updating at key/transitional stages, making the Record of Needs a live document.
The right of parents to have access to information and reports, with time to digest and support to ensure understanding and participation in the decision-making process."
Fundamentally, there should be
"Inclusion of the child's view".
There should also be
"Mechanisms for ensuring greater accountability and consistency across local authorities"
and
"Effective linking with local authorities' staged intervention procedures."
I make special mention of recommendation xiv, which says:
"In future placing decisions, where a special school is recommended, exclusion from mainstream must be justified in relation to the child's best interests. The justification must include a statement about how the special school will contribute to the child's inclusion, for example by specifying arrangements for part-time participation in mainstream, plans for later transfer to mainstream or extra curricular activities."
Evidence regarding special school placement decisions shows that they are often based on the perceived inability of mainstream schools to cope, rather than on more positive considerations. The committee wants to ensure that mainstream schools can become a realistic option for the majority of children, while seeking to maintain the option of a special school placement for those with the most significant needs. No doubt, there will be further discussion of that issue in today's debate.
Recommendation xviii is significant and worthy of note. It advocates the establishment of
"an inclusive education resource centre"
to undertake research and ensure that information and expertise is made available to staff, parents and young people.
I thank the minister for the Executive's response to the report, which gave it a general welcome. However, I am disappointed that ministers felt unable to endorse our definition of inclusive education or to accept the need for a clear and agreed definition. I hope that the minister will inform us of the actions that he will pursue in the light of our recommendations.
We must ensure that the necessary changes to take us towards inclusion are implemented. The committee was left in no doubt, by the evidence that was presented, that we have the opportunity to make a big difference to the lives and education of many of Scotland's children, and that is a huge responsibility. I emphasise that members are fully aware of the importance of those issues, the significance of the findings and the consequence of the recommendations. There was a remarkable degree of consensus within the committee.
The report is wide-ranging and constructive. It is designed to help children with special educational needs, their parents, their teachers and the schools that are involved in this work. I commend the report to Parliament on behalf of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the 3rd Report 2001 of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, Report on Inquiry into Special Educational Needs (SP Paper 264).
The committee's report is a good one and I hope that it will be influential. The issue is of great importance, not only to every child with special educational needs and their parents, but to Scotland's education system. I congratulate Karen Gillon, the convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, Irene McGugan and all the members who have served on the committee, as well as the other individuals who were mentioned by Irene McGugan during her speech. Hard and detailed work has gone into the production of the report.
As Irene McGugan said, the report's 19 recommendations cover a wide range of issues and highlight the many complex and sometimes conflicting issues that arise during discussion of how we can best provide a quality education for all our children. That is our simple aim: to provide the best quality of education that we can for each child. The needs of the child should come first. The committee's report is a helpful contribution to the discussion. Most of its recommendations reflect action that the Executive has already taken or that Scottish ministers are currently considering. The report is well timed.
A great deal is happening in special educational needs and I was pleased that the committee acknowledged the significant contribution that the Executive is making to children with special educational needs and their families. Most of us in the chamber want to work on the issue on a cross-party basis, setting to one side the normal political exchanges, even in the heart of a general election campaign.
I will highlight a few of the actions that are being taken by Scottish ministers. As has been mentioned, we have established Enquire, the national special educational needs information and advice service. We have provided special inclusion funding to local authorities, including support for staff development and training. We have made a commitment to consider the assessment and recording arrangements—the record-of-needs system—for children with special educational needs. Those are only a few elements of the Executive's broad programme of action on special educational needs that was debated and endorsed in Parliament at around this time last year.
I do not propose to try to address all the committee's recommendations in the short time available. I wrote to the committee, outlining the Scottish Executive's views on each of the recommendations, and a copy of that response is available from the Scottish Parliament information centre.
I want to set out some of the policy considerations that have guided our work on SEN in the past couple of years and which remain relevant for future action. Scottish ministers are strongly committed to developing an inclusive approach to the education of all children. A key feature of that approach is to assist education authorities to include children with special educational needs in mainstream education wherever possible and wherever that is appropriate to the needs of the child. That fits with the committee's recommended definition of inclusive education:
"Maximising the participation of all children in mainstream schools and removing … barriers to their participation."
That does not mean that we take a dogmatic view on inclusion in the main stream regardless of the needs of the individual child. We want every child to receive a quality education that is appropriate to his or her needs. There is a wide range of needs amongst children and there continues to be a need for a range of provision that will allow families and young persons an element of choice. Furthermore, the situation is not always either/or and a mix of mainstream and specialist provision can sometimes be appropriate. Flexibility is increasingly important.
Our wish to have a range of provision does not lessen our commitment to inclusive policies—on the contrary, it strengthens it. Inclusion does not mean forced integration. I emphasise that point. We recognise that inclusive education can be delivered for some children through mainstream or specialist provision or, in many cases, and as the committee's report recognises, a combination of the two.
I was interested that the committee heard conflicting evidence from individuals who had experience of mainstream and special schools. Each individual had strong, but often opposing, views on the merits of the education that they had received. That highlights, once again, the importance of considering the individual needs of each child and ensuring that not only the voices of their families, but the voices of the children are heard when decisions on placement are taken.
The Executive is working on guidance for education authorities on implementing the new duty on mainstreaming. The guidance will also seek to highlight parents' rights to choice in educational provision. Of course, effective choice assumes that alternative provision is available in the first place. The special schools sector in Scotland comprises more than 200 schools, mainly local authority-funded but including 33 independent special schools and seven grant-aided schools, which are supported by direct funding from the Scottish Executive, although they also have other sources of funding.
The committee's report acknowledges the debate that has taken place around funding arrangements for those seven grant-aided schools following the recommendation of the Riddell committee that funding for those schools should be transferred to local authorities and that, like other schools in the independent sector, the seven schools should charge full economic fees for pupils who are placed at the schools by local authorities. Discussions with the schools are continuing regarding financial support from the Executive, as everyone knows. I had a constructive meeting with representatives from the seven schools on 25 April and I am undertaking visits to all the schools, which should be complete by the end of the month. So far, I have visited six of the seven schools and have been impressed with a great deal of what I have seen.
I have informed the schools that there will be no change to existing funding arrangements for a further year, until at least March 2003. The schools have welcomed that and I hope that the assurance will give the schools stability to plan ahead for the next academic year. I plan to meet again representatives of the schools and of other interests before making any final decisions on future funding. Throughout that process, the key issue at the forefront of my mind will remain the interests of the children involved. Increasingly, I am coming to the view that the issue needs to be considered in a wider context. It is not simply about the transfer of grant from the Executive to councils.
The committee's report suggests that schools that fulfil a national role should be eligible for financial support from local authorities. Some local authorities already purchase services and expertise from the independent special schools sector in relation to outreach work and staff development and training services. Many of those services are also purchased from the national grant-aided schools.
Various people have suggested that there is a need to consider the role that national centres could play in terms of provision and whether a national strategy for special educational needs is required in Scotland. The national programme for action sets out the framework for the Executive's SEN policy. Nevertheless, the question of a national strategy is important and one to which I am sympathetic, although it will require detailed consideration. In that regard, I will ask the national SEN advisory forum to consider the issue when we next meet, on 5 June.
I understand that the Executive has agreed to produce proposals, roughly parallel to those that exist in England, about access to schools for physically handicapped people. Will the minister give us a timetable or details for those proposals? Physically handicapped people are an important, specific group.
I thank Donald Gorrie for that intervention; I intend to touch on that issue briefly, later in my speech. To give Donald Gorrie a taster of what is to come, I think that the word "shortly" will be used, although I am not at the right page yet. We intend to make specific recommendations in that area. It would probably be wrong to make such an announcement before 7 June, but we hope to move forward sometime shortly after that date.
I have made speeches that explain our options on the proposals that Donald Gorrie asked about. Those options range from having guidance for local authorities, which would be relatively weak—responsibility would not be as well-defined as it is in England and Wales—to having regulation or secondary legislation in the form of a statutory instrument, to having full legislation. We are considering all those options, but have not yet reached a decision. We hope, however, to produce proposals shortly and we want something that is as strong as possible. We want to follow the approach that is being taken in England and Wales; we do not want Scotland to be seen to be falling behind.
The Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report makes recommendations on what it sees as barriers to inclusion. Those are mainly to do with concerns over the resources that are available in mainstream schools, the need for adequate staff development and training, and the question of negative attitudes, some of which still exist and need to be addressed. I agree totally with the committee that there is a need to tackle both structural and attitudinal barriers if education in the main stream is to be an enriching experience for children with special educational needs—and for mainstream children—not an isolating experience. Mainstream education could be, and can be, an enriching experience. We are working with schools and local authorities to address such barriers.
The Executive's inclusion programme, which forms part of the excellence fund, provides specific resources in addition to local authority grant-aided expenditure. Those are additional funds, on top of the core provision that is available for special educational needs, to enable the inclusion of children with special educational needs in the main stream. We have informed local authorities that £13 million is available in this financial year—more than double what was available in the previous financial year—to enable the inclusion of children with special educational needs in the ways that I have described. That funding will increase in each of the next two years. I cannot make the detailed announcement on that today, but there will be an announcement at the appropriate time. I hope that individual local authorities and all those who are involved in this area can have confidence in our commitment on the issue in the future.
We have a well-established staff development and training programme—worth more than
£5 million in the current year—for supporting the development and training needs of teachers, classroom-based staff and educational psychologists. In 2000-01, more than 26,000 staff benefited from attending training events, seminars and conferences. I am aware that, particularly in mainstream schools, concerns remain that more needs to be done and that more in-depth training should be available. However, our programme represents significant progress and more will be done. We are working to establish a new framework for teachers' continuing professional development, which will include specific reference to special educational needs and reflect the new presumption of mainstreaming. Issues relating to special educational needs will also be considered as part of the review of initial teacher education.
The Executive is working to encourage the development of a positive ethos in schools, to ensure effective teaching and learning that can benefit all pupils. I emphasise that that applies to all schools and to all situations. Projects funded through our SEN innovation grants programme include mentoring schemes to provide personal support to children and young people with challenging behaviour, and peer support programmes that are intended to promote inclusion of young people with special educational needs and to develop pupils' self-awareness. All of those are important issues.
Before closing, I want to mention the position on assessment and recording and the whole record-of-needs issue. Recommendation x in the committee's report identifies a number of characteristics that it considers important in identifying and assessing children's needs. The current record-of-needs assessment system was introduced in 1980 and the report refers to the options of
"either replacing the system or revising it substantially."
I am pleased to say that our consultation document on assessment and recording arrangements was launched last week. Copies of the document are available from SPICe. The consultation document picks up on a number of key points from the committee's report, including the need for effective planning for transition at various stages of schooling; the need to involve parents and young people themselves in how decisions are reached; and equality of treatment for all groups and communities in Scotland. The consultation process will run until the end of July and the responses will be crucial in helping us to identify the way ahead. I urge as many individuals, organisations and committees as possible to make their views known on the issue.
Much is going on in the area of special educational needs and I have discussed the need to draw together some of that activity, which we will consider. I do not have time to go into all the details, but, on Donald Gorrie's point, we are liaising closely with the Department for Education and Employment and the Disability Rights Commission on the issues that arise from the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. In particular, we are considering how best to apply the new duty to plan to improve access for disabled pupils to schools and school facilities, as well as considering the curriculum that is being introduced in England and Wales. We hope—it says on my brief—to announce proposals shortly.
We are reviewing the educational psychology service. The main aim is to address the apparent problem of under-supply, which is another important issue. That review is under way and the first meeting of the review steering group will take place on Monday 21 May. The steering group will report in the autumn. We are about to examine funding arrangements for speech and language therapy services, occupational therapy services and physiotherapy services. Shortages can occur in those areas and we want to address the supply issue. We will produce, shortly, guidance on the length of the school week in special schools and for education outwith school for children who are too ill to attend.
I am sure that many more points will arise in the debate. I thank the committee again for its report, and am pleased to lend my support to the terms of the motion.
Before calling Mike Russell, I inform members that, as yesterday, the time limit for speeches in the open part of the debate will be six minutes.
I also welcome the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report. I wish to start by paying tribute to a member who is not present—indeed, who has not been present since the end of 1999: Ian Welsh, the former member for Ayr. He started off this inquiry, and I will refer to the views that he expressed in the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. Ian Welsh had a strong personal interest in this issue. When the committee was discussing its work programme in November 1999, he said:
"I would be concerned about restricting ourselves … There is a broader issue about the integration of children with special educational needs. I am concerned that we do not take a top-down approach … The basic issue, as I have indicated before, concerns human rights."—[Official Report, Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 3 November 1999; c 192.]
What Ian Welsh started, in the form of this inquiry, has been a tremendous learning process for the committee, which has developed knowledge about and concern over the subject.
I wish also to pay tribute to my colleagues Nicola Sturgeon and Fiona McLeod, who, at the inquiry's early stage, bore the burden for the Scottish National Party—they have now moved on to other things. I also thank the committee's staff and advisers. Five of the seven members have, I think, served on the committee since the start of this Parliament. Its meetings have been enjoyable to attend. It may have its political fights, but I think that it is an effective committee.
I have been struck by the warm response to the report from right across the special educational needs sector and I am grateful to the minister for his response. That is important and indicates a very broad consensus and the keen concern of everybody involved to get these matters right.
I will address two specific issues: mainstreaming and what happens to young people when they move beyond the support that schools can give them. That is touched on only briefly in the report, but is one of the crucial areas that we have still to consider.
Before I tackle those two issues, I will speak briefly about the one contentious area in the report, which is indicated by the amendment that Brian Monteith lodged yesterday but which was not called for debate. The debate on special schools and specially funded schools in the committee was complex—this is a complex issue. Those schools are not homogeneous. They are not all the same and do not all exist for the same reason.
Those of us who have visited those schools have been profoundly moved by what we have seen. Later this morning, young people from Stanmore House School in Lanark will attend the debate. It is tremendous that they will be here for the summing-up speeches. That school provides exceptional support for children with exceptional difficulties. The school has to exist because there is nowhere else where those children could be cared for in such a way. Other schools exist perhaps for different reasons. Some schools exist because there is still something of a postcode lottery in provision for certain disabilities, even those of a low incidence. For instance, support for people with visual difficulties and visual impairment is very patchy.
Different types of school need to be thought of in different ways. We cannot jump in with both feet. I tell Brian Monteith that that is an indication that we must give political support to special or grant-aided schools. The position is not simple and there are a range of issues to be looked at. Local authorities have a role in supporting young people in those schools. Local authorities have to work in partnership with schools to find the best way to help individual young people. The centre of the debate lies with what is best for individual young people.
On Monday, I visited the National Autistic Society school in Ayrshire, Daldorch House School, which is not funded as a special school by the Executive. That presents a very heavy funding burden on local authorities. Some children there require not only one-to-one but two-to-one support. Some local authorities pay up to £200,000 a year to support a child there. We need to develop the knowledge in local authorities that such support is necessary. The Executive should help local authorities to meet those costs, particularly where one area has a higher incidence than others, which is a lottery in itself. We should develop the means by which we get the best for every child. We should approach the debate from a young-person or child-centred perspective, not from a dogmatic political perspective.
We should do what the minister said and build the partnership. We should not just talk about transfer of funding in the abstract but look at the way in which we can create a better context for all young people and their families who need help, wherever they are and whatever problems they have.
The concept of achieving the best for each child also affects mainstreaming and integration. We have seen evidence on this from parents, some of whom are here today, and many of us have received letters and e-mails on the subject. Certainly, as a principle, many parents want their children to be an integral part of the school community within their own community. That is sensible and wise and we applaud it, but it does not work for every child and every school community; therefore, it is important to have the sensibility and the resources that are needed to be able to make individual decisions.
Undoubtedly, the most desirable option for any young person or child is to be mainstreamed, to be within the community of their peers. However, we have to recognise that, where the balance is disturbed and the child, the other children or those teaching or looking after those children cannot cope, the same formula does not fit everybody. That is why I think that the report's conclusions are sensible. The report accepts that there is a variety of need and does not try to impose dogma.
I will address briefly post-school support. When I was at Daldorch House School on Monday, I was struck by the story of a young person who had difficulty living even in that small community but who, at the age of 18, had to leave it. The local authority could not provide the level of support that that young person needed. Within three months, that young person was hospitalised; three months later, there is talk of a secure institution for that young person. Society has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds to care for and develop that young person. The process does not end at an arbitrary date. As my friend Mr Quinan knows, there is a distinct prospect of help and development throughout such people's lives, but cutting support off at an arbitrary point makes the problem worse and betrays the young people whom we should be helping.
The same issue exists at Stanmore House School, which has developed an innovative programme with a local college to try to bring young people at the age of 16 into another form of educational community so that they can continue the process of learning and education. However, that is the least-well-supported aspect of the school's work and the aspect for which it has the most difficulty in finding funding, and the funding is not permanent. The Executive or a committee will have to consider post-school support seriously because it is becoming the key issue.
The committee has done the Parliament a service by producing the report. The debate today can do so also by examining with some intensity the issues that the report presents. I knew very little about this subject when the inquiry started. I approached the subject and my first visit to some of the schools involved with trepidation, but I have scarcely seen more caring, loving and enjoyable places in which to spend time. That testimony makes me believe that the support of all parties for the Executive's work, as long as the Executive works in partnership with the Parliament, is the right way forward.
I broadly welcome the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report on special educational needs. The committee took extensive evidence. The concern shown by all those who gave oral and written evidence was compassionate, occasionally moving, and sincere. In particular, I mention the contribution of Mark Macmillan, a former pupil of Donaldson's College, who gave a moving account of his difficulties with mainstream education and of how he found solace and support when he started to attend Donaldson's College. I also pay tribute to the evidence of Drew Hunter of the Equity Group, who gave a different perspective and showed that his time at a special school was not comfortable and said that he preferred to take the support that was available to him in mainstream schools. In a sense, those two examples later provided the one area for disagreement in the committee.
The Education, Culture and Sport Committee has been an enjoyable committee. Many members took part in the inquiry at different times. The work of the clerks was particularly helpful, given the large volume of evidence that we took, and the help of the adviser was indispensable. It is worth paying tribute to all those who gave the committee their help and support.
We were very dissatisfied that the report was so delayed. That was not of our choosing, but the result of the Scottish Qualifications Authority fiasco, which ensured that, after taking evidence throughout spring and summer, we were diverted from concluding the report. That was unfortunate, as, due to the committee system, many members who had heard the oral evidence were unable to participate in the finalising of the report. Because they were no longer members of the committee, they were not able to attend private sessions. However, their contribution at the outset of the inquiry was indispensable.
From the beginning, I was concerned that we should do far more to encourage and assist the placing of children with special needs into mainstream schools. I am happily signed up to those aspects of the report that ensure both that that could become an achievable goal and that genuine and clear reasons should be given for placing a child in a special school.
However, it is important to protect choice when taking that approach. Special schools have a place in the structure of our education system: while mainstreaming makes inclusion more likely, many special schools can ensure that inclusion becomes a reality. The evidence put to the committee was that many children who had difficult experiences in mainstream schools went on to attend special schools and, after a period, were able to return to mainstream schools. It is clear that a variety of different types of school and choices makes the system strong. We should not underestimate the degree to which special schools assist pupils to enter mainstream schools, or the national expertise that can be developed and nurtured in special schools, which can also provide training.
It is important to take account of the different types of schools that we visited during the inquiry. Members made many visits to schools. We found units in primary and secondary schools and different types of schools sharing the same campuses and therefore trying to share lessons across the curriculum. We also found mainstream schools that used a high degree of technical support to ensure that mainstreaming was made possible, and schools where mainstreaming had become common practice because the process had been embedded for a long time. We saw the benefits for pupils—both those with disabilities and their colleagues who had no disabilities. The benefits to those who take part in education were there for all to see. Schools where mainstreaming takes place and special schools make up the strong special needs sector in Scottish education.
It was with regret that I noted my dissent to a number of the report's recommendations and key points on grant-aided special schools. I take this opportunity to place my dissent in context, because I do not wish it to overshadow the immense work undertaken by the committee and its achievement in completing the report.
I understood from the oral and written evidence presented to the committee by Peter Peacock that the Scottish Government was looking for the committee's view on the role of special schools and on how those schools should be funded in future. It was my view that the response of the committee in setting up the inquiry, and the response of the many MSPs who lobbied the Executive, ensured that the change in funding was postponed for a year. It was clear that it made sense for the committee report to be produced before the funding change was phased in.
However, because the committee did not, in my view, give a strong or clear enough answer, the Scottish Government had to postpone the change in funding for a further year. While I welcome the change in funding, the minister made it clear that further discussions will have to be held. The SEN advisory forum that has been established will be invited to consider that issue. It is with some irony that I point out to members that I sought to make an amendment to the report that would have set that very process in the report. I wanted to ask not for funding to be guaranteed for all time but for a formula to be created for deciding what a national centre is and how a school might qualify to become a national centre. Other bodies are going to have to consider that issue. It was unfortunate that the committee disagreed with me on that matter, given that that is the path that the Executive has taken.
Michael Russell says that one must be careful not to bring dogma into the debate, and I hear what he says. I do not believe that schools are homogeneous—they are not all the same—or that there is a simple answer. One should not be dogmatic about the role of special schools and how they are funded or about the role of local authorities. However, I choose to be dogmatic—I am happy to be dogmatic—if that dogma is to put the child first. Many people have made that point, about which there could be consensus. If we put the child first, we must make choice and diversity available, which would allow professionals and parents together to make the best choice for a child. That is the dogma that I follow and why I have taken a stand on trying to define the term "national centre".
I have always said that the schools that receive grant aid now might not qualify as national centres once that term has been defined. They might not have enough pupils from a wide geographical area or the ability to show a commitment to national training. They might not have a national expertise, or be developing such expertise, in particular educational methods. Those might be some of the criteria that we would use to define national centres. Other schools, such as Daldorch House School, which Michael Russell visited earlier this week, might come forward to say, "We are doing good work. We are taking a large financial burden from our local authority to do this good work. Should we not qualify and receive some recognition as a national centre?" We should follow that approach, around which there could be consensus.
I do not wish my views on grant-aided special schools to overshadow the remainder of the report's conclusions, but it was proper for me to dwell on them for a moment, to explain my dissent.
It is important for us to welcome the work of the SEN advisory forum and to examine the implementation of the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000 to ensure that the changes that it makes—which Conservative members, including me, were willing to support—bear fruit. There must be more scrutiny and more investigation, particularly in relation to the record-of-needs system. There were good reasons for the committee saying that that system must be changed but, as there is so much more work to do on that area, we were right to draw a line. However, we may decide to investigate that area further in future.
The committee must enter into more dialogue. I look forward to the committee doing more to open up relationships with the SEN advisory forum in order to continue our discussions. It has been a valuable experience for members to visit schools and speak to pupils, parents and head teachers. We must not stop now that we have completed our report; we must carry on. Together with continuing our visits to schools, the SEN advisory forum seems to offer that opportunity for dialogue. As I said, we must also set up a mechanism through which we can scrutinise and monitor the effectiveness of the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000.
If we are able to undertake those tasks in a manner that will achieve consensus and revisit the issue of special schools at a later date, as undoubtedly we will have to—
Will the member give way?
No, as I am just coming to a close. I will wind up the debate for the Conservative party and I will be able to take Michael Russell's intervention at that time.
As I was saying, if we are able to undertake those tasks, the committee will have a sense of accomplishment and will be able to say, proudly, that it has achieved a great deal. The inquiry was proactive—it was the committee's most important report in that respect—and I commend it to the chamber.
I would like to thank the clerks, Julie Allan and Mary Mulligan, who was convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee throughout this important inquiry. They guided us through it.
The recommendations of the committee's inquiry into special educational needs depart from the orthodoxy that has dominated the approach to the issue for some time. Orthodoxy may be a strong word for a somewhat piecemeal development of special educational needs strategy and the long-running arguments about the relative merits of mainstreaming and specialist schooling. However, the outcome of such arguments has often been implemented inflexibly, according to a "We know best" orthodoxy.
People with such views will find them challenged and I realise that not everyone will be pleased at the outcome of the inquiry. That is why I want to begin by explaining some of the principles that have guided the formulation of the report.
The report does not seek to impose a dogmatic approach to special educational needs. First and foremost, the report seeks to strengthen a child-centred approach that is reinforced by mechanisms that ensure that parents can exert real infuence on the manner of their children's education.
We need to recognise the role of parents as key stakeholders in their children's development and education. Too often in the past, parents have been, at best, tolerated as participants and, at worst, treated as obsessive and neurotic troublemakers and barriers to their children's education.
The importance of mainstreaming is acknowledged in the report, which states:
"There should be an agreed definition of inclusive education, namely:
Maximising the participation of all children in mainstream schools and removing environmental, structural and attitudinal barriers to their participation".
The importance of education that is appropriate to the child is also acknowledged, as is the diversity of educational opportunities. Mainstream and special schools should not be seen in opposition, but as complementary institutions working together to provide a holistic response to educational needs.
In particular, it is recommended that the new community schools initiative should be fully inclusive and that multidisciplinary working should remove barriers to participation. The professional barriers that people put up in respect of agencies and working together need to be removed. New community schools offer an opportunity to deliver education in a new way that meets the needs of children rather than those of the institution.
It is important that the framework of inspection is revised to take due account of the differences in working practices. Inclusive mainstreaming is seen as the default option. Placement at special schools should offer positive advantages that outweigh exclusion from the main stream. Such placement should be in the child's best interest. Justifications for doing so must address how special schools will contribute to inclusion.
It is envisaged that there will be greater movement of children and staff between mainstream and special schools. A child at a special school could participate part-time in a mainstream school, for example, or plan to return to the mainstream school at a later stage. He or she could engage in the main stream through extra-curricular activities.
Special schools with a national role should be eligible for financial support that is based on joint funding arrangements that reflect the diversity of the child's support framework. National and local special schools have an important role. In seeking to define that role, we recognise that the expertise that is available in such schools cannot be duplicated in every school.
Earlier, we heard about the evidence that we took from Mark Macmillan, a pupil of Donaldson's College. He painted a vivid picture of a child excluded within a mainstream school. When he went along to his new school, he found that not only could the children and teachers sign, but so could the dinner lady and the janitor. For the first time in his life, he could truly communicate with the people around him.
Such schools should be integrated to the extent that they work within the system and not outside it. They have much to offer and their expertise is potentially of great value to the main stream. We need to ensure that such schools dovetail with the rest of education. Staff could be involved in shadowing or exchanges, for example.
The committee has suggested that a forum is needed to take those issues forward and contribute to a national strategy. We hope that specialist schools will be fully involved in that initiative.
A key element in the recommendations is the need to replace or substantially revise the record-of-needs procedures. I welcome the minister's statement on the consultation on records of needs. For too long, parents in some parts of the country have faced an uphill struggle to establish a record of needs. For some, that has meant moving to another area of the country to seek specialist education.
In order that assessments are of maximum benefit, we must ensure they are initiated at the earliest possible stage and that the assessment process is completed without undue delay. The document should be updated as necessary to ensure that it remains relevant and appropriate to the child's stage of development. There should be an end to the bargaining that seems to take place between parents and local authorities. We need to consider whether the record of needs is held as a vested interest for local authorities.
We believe that all children should have personal learning plans. The whole process should be open and transparent to parents, who should be given adequate time to assimilate information and adequate opportunities to participate in the decision-making process. The record of needs should show choices that the parents have been offered and should include the child's view. It is important that children are asked and that their views are taken into consideration. There are a raft of ways to do that.
Effective implementation of inclusive education will necessitate significant changes for those involved in education and the monitoring of education.
Targets need to reflect the nature of the school population. They should not be a deterrent to the development of inclusive practices.
Teacher training should ensure understanding. In schools, we are looking not only for in-service training, but—as is incorporated into our core standards—for the time for teachers to share and prepare. In a visit to one school, we met a teacher who had a very good track record of mainstreaming, but her work was sometimes done on a wing and a prayer. She was wonderful, but sometimes she did not have time to prepare. If she had an opportunity to meet her peers and discuss a positive way forward and to consider what support other teachers might need, that would be very positive. Teachers need time to share and prepare, to network and exchange information and to develop appropriate methods and materials for lessons.
Special needs assistants are crucial to the success of inclusion. We heard that in the schools. Their training and career structure must be developed to enable them to integrate effectively in the teaching process.
In summary, we have kept our focus firmly on children and their parents. We envisage a system in which their views have a crucial role in determining the course of the child's education. We envisage a system in which their wishes are supported and integrated into systems of schools and institutions that encompass diversity of education and other service provision, including pre-school and extra-curricular support. We envisage a system in which staff who provide that support are able to work together according to an ethos that is designed to provide the greatest possible degree of educational inclusion that is consistent with individual needs.
To that end, we believe that the Scottish Executive should consider establishing an inclusive resource centre that will undertake research and co-ordinate resources, information and training for staff, parents and, most important, young people with special educational needs.
In the context of the debate, I cannot avoid reference to my previous existence as a head teacher, as a former member of the Renfrewshire education committee and, a few years ago, as an occasional temporary teacher. In my current role as an MSP, I recently met children from Corseford Residential School—which is sometimes referred to as being in Kilbarchan but is in Spateston in Johnstone—at a video launch in Paisley.
I am sorry to say, in retrospect, that in my first role, there was little or no attempt at inclusion. All SEN children with complex needs were firmly excluded from primary and comprehensive schools. That that stigmatised them is without dispute and such stigmatisation was exacerbated by the assumption of many that people with complex special educational needs could not speak for themselves. Therefore, I welcome the principle and intention of paragraph 7, recommendation iii of the committee's report to have SEN children and their parents
"fully involved in decisions about placement and provision."
Such children can speak for themselves, like anybody else. The group of children I met recently at the Art Store in Paisley from Corseford Residential School, who were launching a video for which they had been responsible and who had previously met me at Parliament headquarters, were every bit as lively and irreverent as any other bunch of teenagers one could meet anywhere else in the country.
Life on the education committee in Renfrewshire gave me an overview of the administrative challenges that are involved in including children with special educational needs in the main stream. Various alterations were being made to the system and structure at that time. As a classroom teacher, my instinct and practice—because I am part of the grey vote, my view is probably traditional—was not to want another adult in the room with a class, because for me that disturbed the unique and exclusive relationship with the people in the room. However, as a supply teacher a few years ago—before I came to this place—I had a pupil with learning difficulties who had an assistant with her all the time in class to help her to understand what I was saying. The assistant was a discreet and valuable additional member of the class. As a matter of note, the child was well on her way to going to university to study for a degree.
That small experience encapsulates the need to train teachers in social inclusion. A lot of teacher training is remembered more for what we teachers think the trainers missed out than for what was included when we went through the various teacher training institutions. Young teachers especially do not like to be watched as they struggle with their new profession. Social inclusion training should not only help to inform and reassure teachers in the social inclusion context, but help them to overcome their natural aversion to being watched and help to turn them into team players and to take on board all the assistance they need.
There is little good in providing all the inclusion support mechanisms in the world if children with special educational needs fall through the net, as many often do, especially, for example, dyslexic children. A mechanism must be established to allow for the acquisition of a record of needs. Cathy Peattie mentioned administrative slowness. That is sometimes brought about by the fact that people know that once a child has a record of needs, they will run into a lot of expense that could otherwise be avoided. We have to get rid of that attitude altogether. A child who is awaiting assessment is often unable to cope with normal class work or whatever normal situation they find themselves in. Administrative delay can turn a docile child into a disruptive rebel. Nobody needs that. I am glad to have heard the minister's assurance that we are considering reforming the system and that a consultation document is out.
That brings us to resources. No one doubts the good intent of everyone involved and the willingness to theorise about and legislate for inclusion. The real rub comes in relation to resources and an education budget that has severe demands made upon it. Resources must be found for every aspect of special educational needs.
I noted Brian Monteith's dissent from parts of paragraph 14 of the report. I can understand where he is coming from when I read in that paragraph:
"none of the funding that is being redirected to Local Authorities has been ring-fenced for grant aided places".
I have a letter from a parent whose child is at the Craighalbert Centre in Cumbernauld, which articulates the same fears. However, I am confident from the spirit of the report and from what I have heard this morning that every effort will be made to give every child with special educational needs exactly what they require, in whatever context it is available, at—in all sincerity, I think—all costs. That is very important.
Michael Russell talked about continuing processes of education and the sad situation of a person who left a facility and went into decline because appropriate educational care and stimulation were not available thereafter. As someone who has lectured briefly in continuing education for the grey vote at the University of Strathclyde, I know that education is a lifelong process; it does not stop and start. We talk about human rights and equality of opportunity; the ability to continue education and personal development should go on for as long as possible.
At this juncture, I congratulate the committee on a thorough and worthy report, the success of which will be not its being noted and accepted by the chamber, but its implementation in spirit and detail throughout the nation.
I declare that I am a member of the Educational Institute of Scotland, a former teacher and a member of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. I thank Mary Mulligan, Karen Gillon and Cathy Peattie for the way in which the inquiry has been chaired. I also thank all the clerks and advisers, witnesses and assistants.
The inquiry has been a valuable experience for me. I remember going to schools such as Stanmore House School, run by Capability Scotland, which has been mentioned. We saw the most dedicated staff look after youngsters with the most severe sensory impairment and cerebral palsy. It is clear that to talk about mainstreaming youngsters in that state would be unrealistic, because the critical mass of support that they need could not be supplied with any certainty in a system that is dispersed around the country.
I saw Burnfoot Community School in Hawick, where the system worked well. There was a joint understanding that social work, health and education must come together in certain circumstances. I was also lucky to go to Kingsinch School in Liberton, where I acquired a painting by a young man called David Evers, who hoped to play football for Scotland in Wales at some stage in the game. One of the things that was impressive and important there was, as has been mentioned, the relationship between the school and the neighbouring mainstream school. There was excellent, positive provision for children to move back and forth from one school to the other as appropriate.
The report is important, but it is a stage in a process. This morning, I was sitting thinking about the report and I remembered something that I used to discuss with youngsters at school for a bit of amusement. I think it was Bertrand Russell who put the philosophical question: when Mr Jones eats a lamb chop, when does the lamb chop cease to be a lamb chop and become Mr Jones? I will take answers on a postcard later. The question is about the problem of definition and about the fact that there is a process and that it is difficult to say at which point something feeds into the process and when particular points are reached. I believe that we are in a process. There are problems defining that and defining where we are in the process.
SEN is such a wide concept. Some purists say that every child has special educational needs and, in principle, I agree with that. At the other end of the spectrum, we must consider the children who have severe sensory deprivation and who are barely able to determine their surroundings. That is why we need to decide what is meant by special educational needs and, at the same time, recognise that everyone must be dealt with as an individual.
The definition of inclusion is also important. The committee suggested a definition; I agree that it was slightly bland, but it was intended to be inclusive. I hope that we can still discuss that. In my constituency, there are two parents with different perspectives on inclusion. One has a youngster at a special needs school and is desperate to get the child into the local school; the other has a child who was at the local school and has taken them out of it to send them to a special needs school. Both parents' argument is based on inclusion—one parent wants their child to be included in the community in which they live and the other parent wants their child to be included in a community that can understand and communicate with the child in a different way. There are matters of definition that still need to be discussed.
The interests of children also merit further discussion. We say that we are working for the interests of the child, that we want things to be done in the interests of the child and that we want the child to have a say. Who decides what the interests of the child are? We need an independent and fair mechanism to make difficult decisions when parents, children and local authorities disagree.
It is important that parents who will be involved in such decisions are properly informed and know the choices available and the basis on which decisions are made. That is why the committee has recommended an education resource centre, which would help to train staff, parents and young people in the methods and philosophies of special educational needs and would help to create a general network of provision for parents, so that they are included in decisions and are in a position to know what is available and what their choices are.
Inclusion is still a process and we have not yet switched on to total inclusion. Local authorities and teachers are still in a difficult position. It is difficult when one parent wants a child to be brought in but other parents are—as Colin Campbell said—worried about such youngsters coming in. Teachers can feel that they are not giving youngsters a fair deal. They can feel that they do not know enough and they may not have enough support. We have moved some way in the process, but we are not there yet.
I welcome the tone of the minister's remarks in all sorts of respects. I welcome the progress in the consultation document on a record of needs. The committee is committed to the idea of early intervention. Reading the consultation document, I feel that we need to ensure that everybody who has views to contribute should contribute them. There will be a debate about where the record of needs should kick in, but I feel that early intervention is the way.
I am pleased that a decision has been made to continue funding for another year for special schools. I was absolutely delighted at the tone of the minister's remarks. I hope that the discussion will continue and that we will be able to play a part. I hope that the schools—whose significance has been mentioned—can be given a secure future. The precise mechanism of funding is perhaps not the most important thing; the most important thing is that the resource is available and gives choice to parents and children with special educational needs.
I hope that, as a result of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report, we can have a better-informed debate from now on. I hope that it will continue and that we can make progress together.
I congratulate the Education, Culture and Sport Committee on producing its report. The issue of special educational needs is of enormous importance and I am glad to see the Parliament devoting so much time to discussing it.
Nearly one in five schoolchildren in Britain has some form of special educational needs. Creating an education policy for those pupils is a key priority for the Scottish Executive. Policies that we have talked about this morning, such as actively encouraging the mainstreaming of people with special educational needs in schools, are vital. Last year, the Executive announced that it would provide an additional £13 million to support the mainstreaming initiative. That money will go to local authorities to help them to provide staff and support to allow children with special educational needs to participate in mainstream schools.
I am especially pleased that the committee's report supports the principle of mainstreaming. The Executive's review of services for people with learning disabilities asked whether they were "The same as you?"—or, as Phil Gallie put it, "Just Like Us". Mainstreaming offers people with learning disabilities the same opportunities as everyone else. That is vital. Encouraging those with special educational needs to enter mainstream schools is key to removing the social stigma that is associated with disability and to improving self-esteem, but we must remember that this is a two-way street: it is also important to consider the benefits to children without special needs.
I concur totally with the committee's aim that mainstream schools should become a realistic option for the majority of children, but we must not forget that where it is in the best interests of the child—and I was glad to hear Nicol Stephen mention this—there will still be a need for schools that cater for children and young people with complex needs. One such school is the excellent Rutherglen High School in my constituency, where a holistic approach involving the whole family is paramount. Placement of a child in such a school should be subject to regular review and I am pleased that the Executive has taken that on board from the committee's report. The committee's wish for more flexible provision to enable more integration of pupils from mainstream and special needs schools is already being fulfilled at Rutherglen High and benefits pupils from both backgrounds.
We must accept that more needs to be done to improve services for those with special educational needs. The message that people with learning disabilities are indeed the same as everyone else cannot be allowed to distort the services provided to them and their families. In my constituency of Glasgow Rutherglen, I have dealt with a number of issues regarding special needs, ranging from the lack of adequate pre-school provision to problems during school holiday periods, when no facilities exist to allow parents of children with special needs to have some respite. After-school care has been highlighted as another area in which special needs children cannot always easily be included.
Therefore—and we keep coming back to the word "holistic"—it is vital that we consider a more holistic approach to providing for pupils with special educational needs. It seems somewhat unfair that parents of children with learning disabilities have to pay extra to get proper care for their children. No one denies that children with special needs require more attention, so it is vital that we put in the resources to allow local authorities to provide services for them, which if properly managed and resourced, can be extremely beneficial to all concerned.
I would like, if I may, to read an excerpt from a letter sent to Sylvia Jackson MSP by one of her constituents. Unfortunately, Sylvia is unable to be here today. I am sure that the chamber will wish to join in sending our condolences to Sylvia and her family on their recent sad bereavement.
Members indicated agreement.
Sylvia has attended many meetings of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee and has a particular interest in special educational needs. Her constituent—the mother of a seven-year-old child with autistic spectrum disorder—asked her to participate in today's debate. The child, Kirsty, currently attends a communication facility that is more than seven miles from her home. In the letter, Kirsty's mother writes:
"Can you imagine how anyone would feel going off to school each day in a taxi accompanied by an adult to attend a school some 7 miles away, waving your brothers or sisters goodbye while they walk some 500 yards to their school. To have to spend all your leisure time shadowed by an adult, no children your own age to play with. Always being shrugged aside by your fellow peer group because they do not know or understand you.
Never invited to parties which you absolutely adore or any social events whatsoever, except by close family and family friends who do know you. Being excluded even in those activities you regularly participate in because they don't perceive you enough as an equal or able to see simple adaptation would allow you to be included. Who would be happy with this life?
I have to believe things can be better and by just being there is a start. Being included will be the way forward."
I am delighted to welcome the committee's report and I hope that the Executive will continue to make special educational needs one of its key priorities.
One of the great privileges of being a member of the Parliament is that we have the opportunity to do things that we would not otherwise have the opportunity to do. For me, visiting Stanmore House School near Lanark was a tremendous experience. Seeing—as Michael Russell and others have mentioned—the tremendous dedication of the staff and parents and the courage of the children gives tremendous insight and a greater confidence in humanity, if I may put it that way.
I very much welcome the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report. In a debate on 25 May last year in Glasgow, I sought to highlight some of the issues affecting children who suffer from dyspraxia. In that debate, I drew on my own experience as a parent of children with dyspraxia and spoke about the tremendous difficulties that we encountered in getting the children into the special needs structure. I very much welcome the way in which the committee has drawn together a body of evidence that reflects the difficulties that parents face.
As paragraph 37 of the committee's report states:
"Parents and parents' organisations report having to fight for their rights, with outcomes being strongly dependent on where they live and on the ability of individual parents to be assertive."
I have always felt that my wife and I were fairly assertive, but we found it difficult, because we were constantly on the telephone to the school and the education authority, trying to get the educational psychologist involved and trying to get occupational therapy; it was relentless, and would wear down anyone. As the conclusion of the committee's report states, that creates an atmosphere of confrontation between parents and the system, which is not a supportive backdrop against which to help children.
I was particularly pleased to hear what Nicol Stephen said about educational psychologists, because there is a significant problem. My experience is that it took months to get an educational psychologist from East Ayrshire Council involved. The person who performed the first assessment then changed and someone else took over. It was a constant difficulty. The most shocking experience of the whole process was when someone told us in effect that East Ayrshire Council had too many people with special needs, did not need any more and wanted to keep the statistics down—that was the council's approach. It was totally disheartening for parents, so the aim that parents should not be in constant struggle with the system is to be welcomed.
Michael Russell raised an important point, which has been raised with me on a number of occasions—post-school education, which is wholly unsatisfactory. I find it particularly unsatisfactory in an area such as the south of Scotland, where a number of cross-border issues further complicate cross-education authority issues.
We are looking to support the integration of children in mainstream schools during their first 16 or 18 years, but parents, particularly older parents, often want to ensure that their children have life skills so they will be able to carry on when their parents are not there to support them. Most often, such life skills are developed in residential establishments. I think in particular of a young man who suffers from autism, who is looking to go to a residential establishment, which happens to be in England—it is extremely difficult for him to find funding to do that. His parents, who are aging, are desperately worried, because they wonder what will happen to him after they are gone if he has not been able to develop the life skills that he needs to have a self-managed lifestyle.
It is extremely important that we address that issue, because if we abandon at age 16 or 18 all the valuable work that is done with young people with special educational needs, we will have completely and utterly let them down. We must move the focus that is so rightly put on children and youngsters with special educational needs to what happens in the transition to later life. It is important that we move forward with that.
First, I congratulate the Education, Culture and Sport Committee on its hard work and all the organisations and individuals who were consulted in this review of current service provision.
I have spoken about autistic spectrum disorder on many occasions and I wish to reiterate the feelings of parents, professionals and carers of those who are on the spectrum and those with Asperger's syndrome on some of the recommendations in the committee's report. I especially wish to reiterate their feelings on some of the evidence that was given to the committee, specifically that from the Inclusion Group in Dundee, which is led by Kim Nicoll.
It is appropriate that we are debating special educational needs, this being autism awareness week. It is important that we remember—as most members will know, because they will have received it—that the timing of this debate also chimes with the publication of the National Autistic Society's report "Ignored or Ineligible?" The report states categorically that the system is failing children in their transition to adulthood, which is why it is important that we get things right at an early stage.
I wish to speak about the plight of adults with autistic spectrum disorder. Much of the debate will be couched in terms of the requirements of children with special educational needs. We must remember that large sections of our society will require special educational provision throughout their lives. Most important, we must remember that with the increase in the identification and diagnosis of people with autistic spectrum disorder, and given that we are failing children in their transition to adulthood, it is vital that we develop a strategic plan for the increasing number of adults for whom we will find ourselves responsible.
I wish to highlight some of the National Autistic Society's report:
"People with disabilities have a right to have their needs assessed by their local authority. Yet only 38% of people with autism and Asperger syndrome have had a community care assessment. Only 16% were actually offered one; others had to … fight for one. Although the process of assessment was good, with a high degree of consultation with families, only 45% are actually receiving the services specified as a result … Similarly, at the point of transition from adolescence to adulthood, a little over half of families (53%) had a future needs assessment or transition plan in place. Again, a helpful and consultative process for families, and yet only 16% have had their identified needs met in full."
That is the current position for those who are over the age of 18. Given that there has been a tenfold increase in the identification of people with ASD in this country over the past eight to 10 years, the figures will get much worse unless we recognise that, as well as providing for children at the earliest possible intervention level of 18 months to three years, we must put in place a system to assess adults who have not been assessed.
One year ago, a report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showed that 5 to 8 per cent of long-term prisoners and recidivist prisoners in England and Wales are on the autistic spectrum. Such a study has not been performed in Scotland. I hope that the minister will say that giving us an indication of the level in our prisons would be worth while. There is also a requirement for a further extension of outreach work, which the NAS and the Scottish Society for Autism can do for us.
In evidence to the committee, Kim Nicoll highlighted the fact that too often the record of needs meets not the requirements of the child, but the requirements of the budget. The record of needs and provision for children are being tailored to suit the budget rather than the needs of the child. I suggest that we require to examine the system of the record of needs and to develop a system that does not allow adults to slip out of it and fail to receive provision.
Janis Hughes read from a moving letter. I have received many such letters, which all refer to children. If children do not receive what they require now and little or no provision exists for adults now, what will happen to those children in three to four years' time? Time moves very quickly.
We must address the adult problem in relation to special educational needs and develop a holistic approach to dealing with the issue, as Janis Hughes said. I hope that the minister will address some of the questions that I have outlined.
I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. Like other members, I thank the Education, Culture and Sport Committee for the work that it undertook and for its recommendations. With the exception of recommendation xvi, I am fairly content with them.
Many members with children who attend or have attended mainstream schools have no comprehension of the anguish that parents of children who have special educational needs feel. The joy of taking a child to nursery or school for the first time is blighted by the worry and anguish of too many parents who feel that they must fight all the way for their children's right. That is not right or acceptable. As David Mundell explained, life is hard enough for those families without the parents having to fight for what they believe is right for their child.
I am glad that attitudes are changing and that policies and programmes will be tailored to meet the needs of each child and their family. As many members have said, parents want their children to be educated at their local mainstream school, but that is possible only if the child's needs are fully assessed and met. The will must exist at every level to welcome the young person into the school. I am sorry to say that in my experience, the welcome has not always been warm and the young person with special needs—whatever those needs are—has been considered a disruption to the school's smooth running. That is unacceptable. We must train teachers, other staff and parents so that inclusive education becomes a reality and barriers are removed.
Cathy Peattie said that mainstream and special schools should not be considered to be in opposition. I agree. We have an opportunity to work inclusively to allow schools, families and communities to share and learn inclusively. That happens in many areas. In my constituency, several schools have shared facilities and several schools are working inclusively and integrating children full-time or part-time into the mainstream education system.
I have concerns about recommendation xvi, which relates to grant-aided special schools. I cannot speak from experience of all schools in that category, but I know about the Craighalbert Centre in my constituency, which specialises in dealing with children with motor impairments. It recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. The Craighalbert Centre is ahead of national developments. It operates an inclusive policy and works with local mainstream education providers to ensure that children progress to their potential and, as far as they can, to mainstream schooling.
Craighalbert concentrates on dealing with children from the age of nine months to the age of seven. Almost 90 per cent of children who attend Craighalbert reach mainstream education. That is what we are discussing—inclusive education and ensuring that parents have choices. If the young person can be educated in a mainstream school, we should put our resources into ensuring that that happens.
Staff at Craighalbert school and parents with children there are concerned about events and about the uncertainty of the school's future funding. I welcome the fact that the minister has met representatives of such schools and I will be happy to join him on his visit to Craighalbert, which must be the school he has not yet visited. I would be happy to show him that facility.
Instead of concentrating on educating our young people and dealing with young people with cerebral palsy or other conditions, the staff and board members of Craighalbert must divert their time and effort to worrying about the future. I welcome the extension of the present funding system until 2003, but we must recognise that Craighalbert in Cumbernauld is a national centre of excellence. Children come from all over Scotland and other parts of the UK to develop their full potential through the expertise in that school. The school's ethos is be all you can be—to use a Health Education Board for Scotland phrase. That is what the school does for those children.
We must recognise Craighalbert's national role and the need for national centres of excellence. We cannot expect to have in every local authority area or every school people who have the expertise that can be gathered at special schools. I hope that when the minister invites people from special educational needs groups to become involved in studying the issues in greater detail, he will set the criterion that those centres of excellence must be maintained.
I welcome the report. A great deal of work went into it from many quarters and it represents a serious advance in our efforts to deal with the issues. I welcome the minister's speech and his obvious personal interest, which is refreshing and encouraging.
Without disparaging the members of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee who have spoken, I felt particularly interested in the speeches from those who are not members of that committee. A debate such as today's offers an opportunity for those members to participate in discussing the issues. It is unfortunate that more members do not take the opportunity to put finding out about the work of other committees and contributing a bit to their activities higher on their agendas. We all have lots to do and many people are scurrying around the country abusing other political parties—usually highly deceitfully—which is what passes for electioneering nowadays. I have been guilty of not attending debates on committee reports, but we should encourage our colleagues to play a bigger part in such debates.
I strongly endorse the arguments that Lloyd Quinan made about autism and that Cathie Craigie made about Craighalbert school, which I have visited twice. I am signed on for those, so I do not need to go over the ground again.
My first point has been touched on by various members, particularly Janis Hughes. It is inevitable that the focus of the committee's report is school education for that group of pupils with various problems, but that is only part of the picture. Members have mentioned what happens to pupils after they finish school, before they reach school and when they are not at school, which must also be considered.
I had a humbling morning meeting carers of various sorts in a town in central Scotland. I had a pretty torrid hour and a half from carers—mostly parents—of children, most of whom had Down's syndrome. They felt that the local authority was not giving them anything like the support that it should. One parent applied for respite care when their child was 11 but got it six years later. That affects the child's school education, human rights and whole performance.
We need to have the famous joined-up government that we all talk about. Whether it is government at local authority or national level, it has to provide a whole package of support for parents and children. When the child leaves school, it has to support them in the future. All the elements of that package are necessary, as are the very good ideas that have been elaborated in the debate as to what happens in the school.
Another issue is that of the human rights of children in classes where there are disruptive pupils. The vast majority of pupils with learning disabilities of various sorts are pupils whose behaviour is model, but a minority cause serious trouble and our educational system is defective in that we do not provide schools with enough support. I am sure that all members have anecdotal examples of that. Mine is of a keen and good young teacher in a good school who teaches all his classes excellently, except one. He has given up on that class because of a couple of disruptive pupils. In effect, he has lost the battle, which is not fair on the other 20 or so pupils in the class. The weakest point in the New Testament is the parable of the lost sheep. In the real world, while the shepherd is off attending to the lost sheep—which is very praiseworthy—the other 99 wander over the countryside, get into all sorts of trouble and are eaten up by passing wolves.
We do not give enough attention to the pupils whose education is seriously disturbed by pupils who are disturbed in their behaviour. If we want to achieve the desirable aim of keeping those disturbed pupils in the main stream, we must give higher levels of support to schools that have that sort of problem. The right sort of support can win the battle. It will make those children decent citizens in due course. I make a strong plea for the application of carefully targeted support for schools and classes that have disruptive pupils.
We are on our way to producing a more civilised society. Although there are a lot of obstacles to overcome, especially in the attitude that people take to the issue, the report is a good step forward. I congratulate those who produced it.
I can cheer up Donald Gorrie by assuring him that I am not a member of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. I am not even on the Labour party rota to attend the debate. I am in the chamber because I am interested in the debate. As a Labour back bencher, I am glad to get the opportunity to take part in any debate in the Parliament these days.
I welcome the report and I congratulate the Education, Culture and Sport Committee on prioritising it. The report is another example of Scotland becoming a much better place to live in because of the existence of the Scottish Parliament, which is able to address subjects that would not have been given any kind of political airing under the old political system with which we are all too familiar.
The time for a national focus on special educational needs is long overdue. The system that we inherited two years ago was not delivering and is still not delivering for thousands of children across Scotland. The report includes criticism of the system, based on the evidence of a number of witnesses. They described how access to decent SEN provision is a matter of geographical lottery—Mike Russell described it as a postcode lottery—and depends on the luck factor of where people live.
In my experience, people are lucky indeed to live somewhere in Scotland where there is a good local school that is providing inclusive mainstream education; where the local school is supported by an enlightened education authority that provides a range of choices across mainstream, specialist and community schools to the people living in its area; and where the education authority is in turn backed by a progressive Executive that provides schools with sufficient funding, teacher training and special needs assistance on the scale required. That is what is needed if we are to secure the aim of every child with special educational needs in this country getting the same educational provision as any other child in Scotland is entitled to receive. To be honest, anyone who lived in that kind of place would not be living in Scotland, but that ideal gives us an idea of the scale of the challenge that faces the Scottish Parliament and the Executive in trying to meet the demands that are growing fast.
My experience in elected politics in Scotland stretches back 17 years. Early in my days as an MP, one of my constituents came into a surgery with a complaint. The local education authority in Dundee would not recognise attention deficit hyperactivity disorder—the condition that is known as ADHD—and no local general practitioner in Dundee would prescribe Ritalin to treat it.
Last month, I received a letter from the educational services manager of the same education authority in Dundee, who told me that there are now 170 pupils diagnosed with ADHD in Scottish primary and secondary schools. Other sources have told me that in every school in Dundee City—primary or secondary—Ritalin is being handed out to at least one pupil in every school. I do not, however, want to get involved in a dispute as to whether we should be giving a class-A drug to so many young people.
The demand for special educational needs in Scotland is accelerating—indeed it is exploding, as was described by Lloyd Quinan. Parents of children with autistic spectrum disorder are struggling to get the kind of recognition and provision that they need. Depending on the severity of their attacks, children with ME have to drop out of school for a long time. They do not get recognition and special provision for their special needs.
The range of conditions that members have mentioned guarantees absolutely that special educational needs is a major issue. Janis Hughes rightly said that one in five children in Scotland has some kind of special educational need. It is not a side issue; it is a major issue that should be addressed by the Scottish Parliament.
Like many members, I have received letters from constituents describing their situations. I received one from a single mother who was trying to get the best education available for her son. He suffers from complex learning needs that cover a range of different conditions. She told me that she and her son would ideally like to have the kind of things that are called for in the report. They need a package that would include an inclusive education in a local mainstream school with appropriately trained teachers and special needs assistance.
In addition, the mother needs home-based support so that she can carry on as the primary carer for her son. To ask for that is not to ask for a lot, but that kind of provision is not available—it cannot be afforded in Dundee. Her son was offered an out-of-area educational placement in a residential school. The school is excellent, but it is many miles away from their home in Dundee and that was not what they wanted. The mother described how, as her son grows older, increasing stress and tension is caused when he has to leave his home to return to the school. Her son cannot grow up in his own community, which means that he is suffering a kind of individual apartheid.
We need a national plan to tackle the needs of parents in that situation. We need to identify where the needs and gaps are and where the money is, and is not, being spent. We need to have the political will to find the money to back such a national plan, so as to make a real difference to those parents and their children. The Scottish Parliament and the Executive are not addressing in any meaningful fashion the needs of the one in five children in our schools who have special educational needs.
The minister says that the case is still out for a national strategy. Not as far as I am concerned. In my practical experience—representing Dundee East—the case has been made again and again. The time has come for the Parliament to realise that it is not enough to talk about addressing problems; we have to find the money to pay for the resources that will enable those problems to be addressed. I wish that, instead of for ever being about tax cuts, just for once the focus of the general election would be on the need to increase spending on our public services so that people's needs are met throughout the country. I did not come into politics to pursue tax cuts and I do not suppose that many others did either.
John McAllion and Donald Gorrie were right to make it clear that special needs is a subject that should command top priority at all times. Funding for special needs has, rightly, been increased enormously over the past 10 years. I welcome the key recommendations of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, especially the recommendation that all children should have personal learning plans. I recognise that there is a need for additional resources, advice and training—especially for parents—and I recognise that the record-of-needs procedures should be revised or replaced.
There are in Scotland seven grant-aided schools for particular special needs, four of which I have visited. I have also visited the special school for autism in Alloa and recall vividly one of the children telling me at length why "Chariots of Fire" was such a good film. There were other children there who had no speech, but who were very happy being looked after at the school.
There is a strong case for grant-aided schools to be maintained from direct grant-aid funding. That is because the seven schools are centres of excellence and can be of enormous assistance in giving health and self-confidence to those who have severe learning difficulties or particular special needs. Donaldson's College, for example, which is the national school for the deaf, looks after children from all over Scotland, from Angus to Dumfries. All its pupils are profoundly deaf and use signing as their first and preferred method of communication.
The Royal Blind School in Edinburgh is a day and residential school that has a long tradition in the education of pupils who have visual impairments. Harmeny Education Trust is a special school for pupils aged six to 12 who have pronounced social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. The Craighalbert Centre is the national centre for young children who have motor impairments and it educates young persons between two and seven. Corseford Residential School in Renfrewshire, Stanmore House School in South Lanarkshire and East Park School in Glasgow all provide therapy for children who have speech and physical difficulties, and education for children who have severe learning disabilities and sensory impairments.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton correctly enumerates the schools and what they do, but does he agree with the point that other members and I have made that those schools are not a homogeneous group? As John McAllion said, those schools must sometimes cater for children who might be happy and well looked after in mainstream schools, if their local authority were able to provide it. As Mr Monteith said, that is a matter of choice.
The issue that Mike Russell raises was referred to by Cathie Craigie. The debate about at which school—special or mainstream—a child would be best cared for is anguished and difficult and there is no simple answer. It depends on the circumstances that relate to each child and on the wishes of the children and their parents.
However, there is no doubt that, when a child has severe learning difficulties and substantial medical needs, special schools can provide an invaluable education and care system, because they have a concentration of expertise. Those schools might not survive intact without direct grant funding, because the pupil flow could fluctuate annually, depending on the best interests of the children involved. I have no doubt that local authorities have greatly developed their expertise in that area, but it would be a great mistake for local authorities to see themselves as being in competition with special schools, because the range of specialist provision at those schools will inevitably be more extensive for certain categories of learning difficulty. Cathy Peattie and Nicol Stephen were right to suggest that there should be flexibility in those matters and that the needs and circumstances of the child should be paramount in determining the best outcome. That requires much care, understanding, trouble and investigation in each case.
It is refreshing that the minister said that there might be circumstances in which a child should be educated at both a mainstream and a special school. A flexible approach to the matter is necessary and desirable. I know, from having spoken to relatives of children at special—and indeed mainstream—schools, that it would make a great difference to the families concerned if worries over funding, especially for special schools, were removed. I hope that the minister can consider that point sympathetically.
I wish Karen Gillon every good fortune as convener of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. I suggest to her that one enormously important theme that has been picked up in the debate is that there are great worries over post-school education. When children leave school and go on to further provision, the transition is often traumatic for the children concerned and for their families. I agree with David Mundell's and Mike Russell's references to that, which the committee could usefully consider in future.
I pay tribute to the selfless care and service of the professionals who work in special and mainstream schools, which I believe provides comfort and peace of mind to all concerned. This is a matter that requires great sensitivity and I hope that the minister will continue to give it a sympathetic response.
I congratulate the Education, Culture and Sport Committee on a report that provides a penetrating critique of the current system for the provision of special needs education in Scotland. That critique is all the more powerful because of its underlying support for the broad thrust of policy, which has seen a significant shift in recent years towards the concept of inclusive education. There is broad support across the party political spectrum for the policy objective of maximising participation of all children in mainstream schools. As John McAllion and others expressed eloquently, the problems lie in implementation.
From my experience of trying to represent the views and concerns of parents, I confirm the fundamental truth of the committee's observations in paragraph 19 of the report, which says that the evidence suggests that
"success has been achieved through a combination of a strong commitment by individuals, flexibility and resources. The main barriers to inclusion are a lack of resources in mainstream schools, inadequate training of staff and negative attitudes."
I have seen for myself the strenuous efforts that have been made by the likes of South Ayrshire Council to achieve inclusiveness, especially for children with learning difficulties, who were previously stigmatised because of their attendance at special schools.
The learning bases that are provided in schools such as Dalmilling Primary School and Mainholm Academy in north Ayr are models of their kind. Notwithstanding some parents' sensitivities, nobody could fail to be impressed by the commitment of the teachers and staff in those schools and by how well all the pupils have adjusted and responded to the mainstreaming initiative. However, the system fails other children who have special educational needs, especially those who have social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Much more attention must be given to meeting the needs of children who have chronic mental health problems.
In recent months I have been trying to assist parents of children who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I must tell members that almost all those parents have a horror story to tell about the treatment of their child in school, from the child being forced to assume a dunce's position in class, to tales of bullying and scapegoating. There is a crying need for education and training for teachers and special needs assistants on how to cope and how to get the best out of pupils who have mental health problems and disorders. That training and education must be for all the teaching staff in a school. We must have much more in-service provision for teachers—it is not good enough merely to have one specialist person in the school who understands about ADHD, autism or other problems. I whole-heartedly endorse that recommendation in the committee report.
There can be no denying that reducing class sizes must also be on the agenda if we are talking about mainstreaming special needs kids. I also support strongly the report's recommendation of the need for health, education and social work professionals to work together to develop support packages for children and families. An holistic approach to treatment, education and family support is conspicuous by its absence in the cases that I have been dealing with.
For example, the administration of medication to children in schools leaves a lot to be desired. As John McAllion pointed out, and as members will be aware, many children who are diagnosed with ADHD are prescribed a class-A drug, Ritalin, to control their behaviour in school. However, many parents have found that there are no qualified personnel in schools to supervise the taking of the drug and, on occasion, children have been allowed to self-medicate. John McAllion found out how many children in Dundee are taking the drug, but Ayrshire and Arran Health Board does not keep a database of children who are currently being prescribed Ritalin. The system is wide open to accident and abuse.
I endorse the committee's recommendation that informal parent support networks ought to be facilitated and supported. Authorities like to deal with individuals, rather than with collective approaches by parents. At the moment, the system provides very little for parents. I spent last Friday evening with parents of children who suffer from ADHD, encouraging them to work collectively to establish a support network in Ayrshire. Thanks to the offer of help from the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, that effort was successful. However, my point is that such a support network should have been up and running for years, long before now, acting as a spur to improve service provision and providing relief from the purgatory that David Mundell and other members have said that parents go through in dealing with the authorities.
I hope that the Enquire service and the pilot projects that are developing local mediation services to help parents and local authorities work together to resolve disputes will be successful. I look for some feedback on that from the minister in his summing up.
I welcome today's debate and I am particularly grateful for the chance to contribute. As members know, I was a member of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee throughout the inquiry, but left before the final conclusions and recommendations were drawn up, which is a bit like leaving the church before the singing. I am therefore delighted to have my say today. I am also delighted with almost all that my colleagues recommend in the report. There is obviously not enough time to go through it all, but I would like to touch on three areas in particular: support for parents of children with special needs; support for teachers; and support for pupils.
I shall begin with parents, because one of the most disturbing aspects of the evidence that the committee heard concerned parents' experiences. Across the board, the story that parents and families had to tell was one of frustration. The experience of trying to access the best special educational needs provision for their children was exhausting for many families. Parents find it impossible to find information and they do not know their rights or what is on offer. When they do know what is on offer, they find it difficult to access that provision.
Dealing with one's child can be pretty wearing at the best of times. Having to battle for their right to a decent education as well can be just too much. It is depressing that the education authorities, and particularly the psychologist services—which I know are staffed by caring individuals who are dedicated to their work and should be the saviours of most of those families—are often seen as part of the problem or as an obstacle to progress. They are not seen as the pathfinders into a service, but as the gatekeepers of and barriers to it.
The report offers many examples, but I particularly remember a comment that I heard when Mary Mulligan—the former convener of the committee—and I visited Donaldson's College. Parents wanted so much for us to hear what they had to say that they took the morning off and travelled to the school from all over the country. One mother said, "You learn very quickly to travel in pairs when you're the parent of a child with special needs. If you are by yourself, you are isolated—you are picked off and you have a difficulty battling with authority."
The problem is probably best highlighted by the failings in the record-of-needs procedure. Cathy Peattie commented in detail on that and on the committee's recommendations, as did Colin Campbell and Lloyd Quinan. I do not want to add to their comments, other than to emphasise that many families rely on the record-of-needs document to secure what is best for their child. Depending on the child's condition or on where the family lives, opening a record of needs can be a lengthy, if not impossible, task. The record-of-needs system must be made to work efficiently and fairly.
I want to mention teachers briefly, as they are crucial to making our special educational needs policy work. As Ian Jenkins mentioned, there is no doubt that some teachers are apprehensive about what mainstreaming special educational needs will mean to them. Too often in the past, we have expected teachers to shoulder the burden of extra responsibility, but without giving them the resources, training and support to make that possible. We should be quite clear that mainstreaming special educational needs is not the cheap option. Resources are required, not just to help remove the physical barriers, but in the deployment of support staff and auxiliaries and to give teachers confidence in their ability to cope. I am delighted by the review of initial teacher training that has been announced, and I look forward to seeing the results of that review at the end of the summer.
I want to focus on one of the key sentences in paragraph 6 of the report. It says:
"The Committee wishes to ensure that mainstream schools can become a realistic option for the majority of children, whilst seeking to maintain the choice of a special school placement for those with the most significant needs."
A lot of energy has been expended talking about the position of the grant-aided schools. There are concerns, but some of the fears that have been expressed are misplaced. The Conservative education spokesman has not done his party—or anybody else—any favours by the manner in which he tried to create divisions and to exploit divisions that do not exist. As is often the case, Mr Monteith spreads discontent where there is harmony. Neither the committee nor the Executive is anti-special school; nothing could be further from the truth.
None of us who visited the schools can have failed to be impressed by the work that the schools do. I have not had the opportunity to see them all, but I have visited Donaldson's College, the Royal Blind School and the Craighalbert Centre, which are beacons of excellence in special educational needs provision. Others should aspire to do the work that those schools do and to the quality of education and care that they provide. Those schools enjoy a position of privileged central or national funding, although there is no doubt that some are more national than others. The criteria for funding those schools need to be made more equitable, while preserving and protecting the excellent work and standards that they have already achieved, and I am glad that discussion with the Executive on that has started. I do not want to go into detail, but I recommend that the Executive look at some of the excellent suggestions that are made in the proposal for a national strategy for special needs, which was put together by the schools that I mentioned.
In some ways, I resent having to spend so much time discussing an issue on which there is broad agreement. Mr Monteith should know that the strength of committees lies in their ability to deliver unanimous and cross-party analyses and recommendations. I believe that that could have been achieved in this case. The argument is not between mainstream and grant-aided schools, but about how we can improve facilities, resources and standards throughout the sector.
I shall close, as other members have done, by quoting from a letter that helps to illuminate why inclusion and mainstreaming are so important. It is from a family in my constituency, but I am sure that other colleagues will have received similar letters from members of the Equity Group. My constituents have three children. They say:
"Michael and Gavin attend the local primary school and walk to school with their friends, everyone who lives around us knows them and neighbours often wave as they run past. Stephen does not attend our local primary school. He has the label of autism and so he attends the … school on the other side of the authority and hence he is picked up and dropped off by taxi every day—he has no opportunity to walk to school with his friends, he is not well known in the area."
The letter goes on to say:
"We know that the authority have a very strong inclusive policy and are trying to increase the number of children with special educational needs who are attending their local mainstream school but the process is slow."
The process is frustratingly slow. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report acknowledges the work that has been done and the commitment of the Executive to special educational needs, but the issue must remain a political priority and appropriate resources must be allocated.
To quote a slogan in current use—with which some members may be familiar—much has been done, but much more remains to be done.
I urge the Executive to press ahead.
I have found this debate on the committee report very useful and productive. I believe that it has covered many aspects of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's report, and that is important. I feared that the debate might concentrate on special schools, but I am pleased that, with the help of members of the Parliament who did not serve on the committee, we have managed to broaden the debate.
I thought that David Mundell's speech, which raised the issue of the atmosphere of confrontation that parents face, was especially welcome. Other members mentioned that point. In my opinion, the record of needs cannot last and there is consensus that a review of it is required. We will have to find a radical way ahead if we are to resolve the real problems that parents face.
When I visited the Craighalbert Centre, I met a parent who has a child there. It became clear to me that part of the problem was gaining information. It is not only the problem of going through the record of needs, but of obtaining information, when going through that record, about the variety of choices that are available. That problem could be addressed. I feel—and have felt for a long time—that there is a conflict of interest in the system, in that the authority that reviews the record of needs has self-interest in respect of provision. We must seek to resolve that problem.
Lloyd Quinan, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton and other members mentioned the problem of, as Lloyd Quinan phrased it, "transition to adulthood". The committee touched on that matter in taking evidence, but we have far more work to do on it. I welcome the contribution that members have made in raising the issue. I will seek to raise that matter in the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, so that we can consider it further.
In his speech, Ken Macintosh said that, in raising the issue of special schools in the manner that I did, I have done my party a disservice, ensured the breakdown of consensus have, in a sense, damaged the committee's report. Ken Macintosh could not be privy to the discussions, because he was no longer on the committee and therefore not able to attend its private meetings. I sought to answer some of the clear points that were made in the oral evidence about what a national centre is. I sought to ensure that the report at least defined what a national centre might be, or to find a way to establish what a national centre might be. Sadly, that was not possible.
I accept that I have a view about national funding and I accept that others sincerely believe that national funding should not exist, but there is a separate issue about whether we recognise some institutions as national centres of excellence. That is separate from the issue of national funding. I sought to tease out how we might describe what a national centre is but, sadly, that was not possible. I now see that that issue will be examined, with the help of the minister and the SEN forum.
On national funding, it was clear from the evidence that there is genuine and deep concern about the existence of some of those schools, first, if we do not categorise them as national centres and, secondly, if we do not as a consequence institute some provision of national funding. It is clearly for us to address that issue, and not necessarily to reach a conclusion, but the committee did not even address the matter. The committee's recommendation, in discussing how COSLA might consider the matter, passed the buck.
Does Mr Monteith agree that the inquiry was not into the seven grant-maintained schools? It would be unfair of the committee to pretend that it could take a view, when it had not heard evidence from, or visited, each of the seven grant-maintained schools. Mr Monteith again raises the idea that the continued existence of those schools is under question. Their continued existence is not in question; it has, in fact, been guaranteed.
It is rather disingenuous to say that we can all agree that those schools are important and should be part of the overall provision—which view has attracted consensus in the debate—without us having discussed it and formed a view, in the context that ministers clearly want us to discuss it and form a conclusion. The committee chose not to do that. No member would second my amendments to the report, which ensured that they were not even debated. That is why I brought forward—[Interruption.] Michael Russell coughs, as if to show dissent. The fact is that my amendments to the report were not debated, because they did not have a seconder.
I will give way to Mike Russell, who will no doubt try to correct me.
I must not allow my cough to stand in for me.
I am afraid that I do not recognise the account that Mr Monteith has given of what was discussed in the committee. I see that there is assent to that from the other committee members. The committee attempted to discuss the issues that Mr Monteith wanted to discuss. I seem to remember that we had great difficulty in getting Mr Monteith to formulate the issues into an amendment that we could debate. In all those circumstances—I shall return to the matter in my summing up—I do not think that Mr Monteith's account of events bears the hallmark of, or stands the test of, truth.
Mr Russell's cough was far more accurate than what he said afterwards.
I have before me, and anybody is entitled to read them—
On a point of order. Presiding Officer, will you give guidance to the excellent people who write the Official Report as to whether a cough is a parliamentary activity? As a member of the Procedures Committee, I am interested in what constitutes a contribution to the debate. Perhaps you could guide us on that.
We shall ensure that the quality of Mr Russell's cough is duly investigated and we shall report back.
I assure Mr Gorrie that, if he attended the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, he would find that when a member is saying something that Mr Russell does not like hearing, he seems to erupt into a fit of coughing.
As I was saying before Mr Gorrie's point of order, I can display for Mike Russell the written process by which I formulated my amendments. I recall clearly that, at the time, I was willing to accept amendments to my written amendments. I remember the huddle that took place to discuss whether the amendments should be accepted. It was decided that they should not be accepted and not discussed.
On a point of order. Is it in order for a member to bring to public attention, in the chamber, a matter that was raised in a private meeting of a committee? Surely the purpose of a private meeting of a committee is to have a full and frank discussion of views in private, not in public.
Yes, Mr Monteith was sailing close to the wind there: private is private.
I am happy to move on.
I am aware that several members, including Michael Russell, are especially keen that all evidence of advice and discussion should be put before Parliament when it relates to the SQA. Clearly, he does not like the truth to come out about what happens during committee meetings in camera.
Patrick Webb, of Harmeny school, said:
"Harmeny School is the only grant-aided school specifically for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. We work with young children aged between six and 13 and are currently involved with 18 local authorities. … The removal of grant aid will cause two serious problems. First, fee levels will rise steeply and abruptly; secondly, our cash-flow situation will be untenable. If we foresee a situation in which we will be unable to pay our bills, company legislation obliges us—frankly—to fold our tents."—[Official Report, Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 27 March 2001; c 2209.]
That is why I say to Kenneth Macintosh that the issue must be addressed. We must find out whether any national centres exist and, if they do, whether they require national support. Michael Russell already gave an example of a school in Ayrshire that no doubt does much good work, but which puts a particular burden on the local authority.
Mrs Sandra Kerley of Capability Scotland said:
"Central to all our concerns is funding. In our written submission we have supplied information on our current difficulties with local authorities and the role that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is playing. There is no reference in the committee's report to any transitional arrangements."—[Official Report, Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 27 March 2001; c 2206.]
I sought to address the lack of such a discussion and conclusion.
I am sad that Kenneth Macintosh provoked me into such a response. As I said, the work of the committee has been very helpful in this area and the debate has mainly been very positive. I welcome that aspect of the report and look forward to hearing speeches from the other members, whom I expect to take my interventions in the same spirit as that in which I took theirs.
I shall endeavour not to cough; however, I assure members that it is getting much better, and therefore less expressive.
Unfortunately, I take issue with much of Brian Monteith's speech. For example, the letter from Harmeny school that he mentioned was written before its representatives returned to the committee and met the minister; they—and the other schools—would admit that any doubts and fears that they might have had have been assuaged by those meetings.
It is not—should not—be possible to go into a detailed exposition of what happened in a private meeting when the committee was endeavouring to come to an agreement on its report. I have said in the past that there are times when the committee needs to meet in private. With the permission of the committee, I will re-emphasise what I said in my intervention; I do not recognise Brian Monteith's account of that particular discussion. There was a desire to reach an agreed position among the parties and individual members—which is how we approached the matter—on what we would say about the seven special schools.
What we wanted to say—the point has been made time and again in the debate—is that this group of schools is not homogeneous. Different children have different requirements and, as Lord James Douglas-Hamilton eloquently pointed out, the schools perform different roles. However, they are worthy of support, and the issue of how such support arrives is almost incidental to that fact. In his opening remarks, the minister helpfully indicated that he also sees the issue in a much wider context than whether the money comes directly from the Executive or in other ways. The report in no way lessens the commitment to those schools; however, it recognises children's different requirements and the need for a partnership among parents, local authorities, the Executive, the Parliament and the young people themselves. I hope that the minister will take on board the fact that such a partnership must now develop a national strategy, because all those people are key stakeholders in what happens and how the matter is taken forward.
It is a perversion of the debate to limit it to the question whether the Executive should sign an annual cheque for seven schools—that is not the real issue. The real issue that members in all parties have addressed is how we should focus on each child's individual needs and how, as a society, we can support and develop those children, not only in the special schools, but throughout their lives. By doing so, we can begin to address some of the problems that will arise—and that are arising—at the end of schooling.
By and large, we have had a consensus and a positive approach. Furthermore, many individual remarks and accounts of experiences have thrown light on the need to support the committee's report, to accept what the minister has said and to engage in joint activity involving the Executive, the Parliament and the other stakeholders.
However, I was very struck by a comment that was made by John McAllion, which was echoed by my friend Adam Ingram. The debate is also about resources. Fortunately, we have not made that issue the centre of the debate and we have not divided on it. That said, the debate is also about providing sufficient resources to ensure that children receive the help and support that they need. That help is not cheap.
In my opening remarks, I mentioned that the minimum cost for a child at Daldorch House School is probably about £100,000. That child requires 24-hour attention, three shifts of staff and all the ancillary services. The cost could be as high as £200,000 or £220,000 for severely autistic children at the school. That is a lot of money; for a local authority, it is the cost of keeping open two primary schools. As those authorities have genuine difficulties, involving them with the Executive's support as willing funders in the partnership is the only way forward. If that does not happen, local authorities will be glad to slough off the responsibility, because it can be met by other sources. I do not mean that as a criticism. However, the issue is complex. If local authorities slough off the responsibility for any child, they also slough off their central commitment to mainstreaming. The moment that a local authority says that a child who lives in its area is not its responsibility, there is no mainstreaming, because a whole section of children is removed from the established context of education in Scotland and put somewhere else. All those issues are interlinked, and trying to focus on the single issue of where the money for special schools will come from damages the debate.
I am very glad to welcome some young people from Stanmore School who have just arrived in the public gallery, because today's debate is not about statistics, money or the minutiae that Brian Monteith has tried to suck us into. Instead, it is about supporting, helping, caring for and involving in the community the children who are in the chamber today and many others. If we see the debate in such a way, the Parliament is not some dry and arid place, but part of the living development of the Scottish community.
The Parliament and the Education, Culture and Sport Committee have shown themselves in a good light today. However, this is the start—not the end—of the process. Although we have reached an agreed position with the Executive that we can proceed with, we must never lose sight of one vital factor. The debate is not about figures, politics or—as Mr Monteith said in his opening remarks—dogma; it is about belief, faith, caring and the creation of community. In the words of Ian Welsh, who was the inspiration behind the report, it is about human rights and human beings.
I start by adding my own welcome to the children from Stanmore House School, which I visited only yesterday. It is great to see them in the chamber, and I am sure that many of us will meet them after the debate.
I also welcome the debate, which has been worth while and marked by speeches of high quality. Through the debate and the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's work, we are genuinely developing policy and shifting it in the right direction. As many members have pointed out, we are taking a more flexible and child-centred approach and that must be the focus for each and every one of us. For example, it is clear that the continued involvement of a special school can be absolutely crucial in preparing or enabling a child to take up a mainstream place or in allowing a child to keep—and flourish in—such a place.
Mike Russell spoke well on a range of issues. Indeed, his first speech was an excellent summary of our thoughts and—more important—touched on the emotions that we feel when we address the subject. I agree with him that the partnership between the Parliament and the Executive that has been demonstrated this morning is crucial to getting things right.
Furthermore, I know about the frustrations that many parents and children experience at a child's 16 to 18-year-old stage. Just as they seem to be developing and realising their potential, that can stop. Colleges have an important role in addressing the removal of such false barriers. When I was Deputy Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, I chaired the national action group that was set up to carry out work in response to the Beattie committee report. Now that I am in a different department and no longer involved in that group, I have suddenly become conscious of the importance of creating links. Following Mike Russell's comments, I undertake to discuss with the national action group some of the issues that have been raised this morning.
Brian Monteith said that he agrees with many of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's recommendations and with much of what has been said in the debate. I think that he is sincere in that, and I agree with much of what he said, especially regarding the importance of specialist provision. As I have said, I am interested in national provision as a way of making mainstreaming a reality—provision of expertise, research and outreach work. National centres can extend to different parts of Scotland and reach remote and rural areas to give the advice, guidance and training that people need—and training is important.
Special educational needs concern not only the placement of pupils and the postcode area from which they come, nor is it only about the seven national schools. We must consider the whole sector and look wider. There is some consensus among members and I am sympathetic to the idea of a national strategy. I hope that the work of the national advisory forum for special educational needs will be welcomed by everyone.
Cathy Peattie mentioned what we are all aiming for: not a dogmatic or political approach, but a child-centred approach in which parents will play a real role. We are not asking for a philosophical or high-level commitment to the involvement of parents; we want a response to the blood, sweat and tears—too often and too many—of parents who are battling with the system. We want a solution that represents the best interests of the child.
David Mundell's description of his personal experience was especially moving. Members could sense that he was touching only the surface of a deep emotion. His important speech raised the issues that we want to address. Colin Campbell also talked about his personal experiences—of the old way, of the resistance and inertia that existed and of the instinct of exclusion and the stigma that was associated with it. Ian Jenkins, too, gave a personal account, but I shall not rise to his Bertrand Russell-like challenges regarding lamb chops and I will skirt around his definitions of inclusion and special educational needs. Important though those definitions are, we do not want to get lost in argument over them; we want to put the child at the forefront of our thinking.
Lloyd Quinan raised many important issues and a significant proportion of his speech related to the situation of adults who have autism or who have been diagnosed with ASD. Lloyd mentioned prisons, which I shall raise with Jim Wallace, the Minister for Justice. We are all concerned about the increasing number of individuals, especially children, who are being diagnosed as having ASD. Nevertheless, the fact that the condition is being diagnosed must be regarded as a positive development. The problem is in addressing those individuals' needs. In following up the learning disabilities review, we are undertaking work with such adults. The review's report recommended the establishment of a national network to make post-school provision more effective. That recommendation is being implemented, as Lloyd Quinan will know, by the National Autistic Society and the Scottish Society for Autism, and a great deal of follow-up action will be required.
Donald Gorrie spoke of disruptive behaviour, which is undoubtedly a barrier to learning. I do not want to drift into the issues that are associated with the discipline task group. Those are separate issues, although they relate to many of the points that have been made in this debate. It is important to realise that much disruptive behaviour reflects the continuing low-level disruptive behaviour that is associated with many of our pupils, not specifically with individuals with special educational needs. The discipline task group is considering ways in which to address and make recommendations on the fostering of positive attitudes towards education, including SEN education, and on the development of strategies to deal with challenging behaviour and social and emotional problems.
I touched on the development of a positive ethos in schools at the start of the debate and the message is clear. If schools do a good job on the inclusion of children with special educational needs, that has a positive effect on them, including their discipline and their ethos.
I agree with much of what John McAllion said, but I would like to correct one point that he made. I did not say that the jury was out on the need for a national strategy. I said that I was sympathetic to the idea of a national strategy. That is a significant difference. I said that I would discuss the issue with the SEN national forum on 5 June, which is not far away.
We are injecting many resources into SEN. In 2001-02, £200 million is being invested through grant-aided expenditure. That represents increases of 11.7 per cent on the previous year and 17 per cent on 1999-2000. That investment will rise in 2002-03 to £220 million and to £238 million the year after that. That is not ring-fenced money, of course, but it is being given to local authorities and all of us want to ensure that it flows through to the children. That is why we have developed some specific grants, such as the inclusion programme funding, which is worth £13 million this year. Last year, that funding was £6 million and I have already said that that funding will increase in the following two years. Funding for training will increase from £5.4 million this year to £7.4 million next year. That will help to address some of the issues that were raised in the debate. The SEN innovation grants programme is being funded to the tune of £2 million.
However, although the funding issue is vital, it is not the only thing with which we must be concerned. We are undertaking a major consultation on the record-of-needs process and we are dealing with the access to school issue that was discussed in the context of the UK Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001. We are reviewing the education psychology service. We are examining funding arrangements for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy services. We are producing guidance on mainstreaming, on the length of the school week in special schools and on education outside school. We are reviewing the funding of the seven grant-aided schools. All of that shows that special educational need is attracting great attention following the creation of the Scottish Parliament.
I conclude by paying tribute, not to the Parliament or the committee, but to everyone involved in special educational needs in Scotland: the staff from the educational side, from the social work side, from the health side and all the staff who are involved with children with special educational needs; the parents; and the pupils, who are all exceptional in their own way. I should stop at that point because one adjective—or a list of adjectives—could not sum up the individual children. Most of all, it is those children whom we are thinking of in today's debate and our future work.
I join my colleagues on the committee in thanking former committee members, our clerks and our adviser, Julie Allan, for the support and help that they have given us in drawing together the report. I also want to thank Sam Galbraith, who was the Minister for Children and Education when we began the process, and Peter Peacock, who was his deputy minister and who has provided the committee with a great deal of support and information.
The experience of producing the report has been valuable. The committee enjoyed it, but also found it challenging. I will make something of a confession. When I began my part in the committee's inquiry process, back in November 1999, I was sceptical of mainstreaming, probably because of my own experiences as a child. I never encountered any children with special educational needs in my classroom—they went away in a bus to a school somewhere else, because they were different, and could not be educated with me.
Looking back on that, I realise that that is exactly the kind of impression that we must challenge among young people who are growing up now. Children with special educational needs, despite those needs, are not different from other children in Scotland and should not be treated differently. They should be able to expect the same high standard of education that every other child does.
As part of the inquiry process, we began to visit schools. My scepticism began to change when I saw a unit, outside Stranraer, for children with autism. In that small community, those children were able to be educated alongside their peers in those classes where they were able to cope. The pupil whom I saw had a member of staff assigned to him, to be his support. That staff member sat with the pupil in classes, helped him to get into the educational curriculum and to participate in physical education, art and music, as a starting point. He was then, slowly but surely, able to participate in other mainstream classes.
That young boy had a personal learning plan—not one that was developed a year in advance, but one that had to be developed every month, because his needs determined that a plan for how he would learn could not be progressed a year in advance, but had to be worked out on a month-by-month basis. That was a positive step, taken by the local authority and the school, to meet that young boy's learning needs. The other kids in the school were not at all fazed by that young boy's being in their classrooms—they welcomed him. They did not seem to have encountered any problems by his being there: they achieved to their full potential, in the same way that he achieved to his. That, for me, is what it was all about.
I then visited a school in Aberdeen, with a wide variety of pupils who were integrated into the main stream of the school. The school included kids with physical and other disabilities who were able to participate in a wide range of activities. One young man in particular stood out. He had cerebral palsy, and was taught in the mainstream classroom. He often shouted out in class when he was participating in lessons, but he was there, with the rest of the class, with his computer, doing his maths lesson. That was an eye-opener for me: it challenged my stereotypes and preconceived ideas.
I also visited a school in my constituency—it has received many mentions in the chamber this morning, and I join other members in welcoming the pupils from Stanmore House School. It is good to have Timothy, Yvonne and Abigail here, because such visits are what the Parliament is about. Before I was elected I was asked, "What would you like to see this Parliament doing?" I replied that I wanted every child in Scotland, at one point in their school education, to visit the Parliament to see what we did. Every child means every child, across the spectrum, and it is good that kids from Stanmore are able to be here.
Stanmore House School is very special to me and I resent anyone's attempt to say that I, as the constituency member, would do anything to put its future in jeopardy. It is a school that I and the local community value. It is part and parcel of Clydesdale. Stanmore delivers a service to young people, perhaps 75 per cent of whom will, in the end, never be able to be integrated into mainstream education, not just because of their educational needs, but because of their health and other complex needs. Children receiving hourly gastro feeds and children who have very little sensory movement will not be able to take part in mainstream education and should be able to receive the best type of education possible.
Other children at the school can, however, be integrated into mainstream classes or provision. Also, pupils at Lanark Grammar School can come to Stanmore House School to work with the pupils there in their own environment. In December, I attended the school concert at which pupils from Lanark Grammar helped pupils from Stanmore to participate in music and song. That challenged the preconceived ideas of the pupils at Lanark Grammar. Stanmore House and Lanark Grammar have rewarded them and taken on board what they are doing to help.
This morning, I spoke to Timothy, who has an interest in agriculture and wants to go to Oatridge Agricultural College. His teacher told me that he has problems doing that, but that should not be the case. Timothy has the interest and ability necessary to take forward his education and should be able to do that. As the constituency member, I have an obligation to help him to do that. In setting a national framework for special educational needs, not just in school but throughout the educational world and in all services that are provided across Scotland, the Parliament has an obligation to help young people such as Timothy to fulfil their potential.
I will pick up on several points that members made. The points that struck home most strongly with me were those about individual experiences, as that is what we are talking about. Janis Hughes mentioned an individual. She also mentioned Phil Gallie. I had one wee problem with that. Phil Gallie may have mentioned the Executive's review, "Just Like Us", but I do not think that there is anybody quite like Phil Gallie—perhaps we should have higher expectations for the achievements of children. Janis presented evidence about a young girl who is a constituent of Sylvia Jackson—I pay tribute to Sylvia's work on the committee in bringing issues to us. Kirsty is a young girl who clearly has a great, positive future but who has to leave her own community to be educated away from her peers and the people with whom she plays in her street and the swing park. If possible, those are the people alongside whom she should be educated.
John McAllion talked about one of his constituents in Dundee: a single mum who wanted her son to be educated in her own community. John expressed strong feelings with strong words. He is right that we need a national strategy. We must tie up all the loose ends and ensure that what happens in one authority does not differ from what happens in another. We must identify any gaps and provide the resources to close them. We must provide a strategy so that everybody knows what we are talking about and what can be expected.
David Mundell's evidence as a parent was very strong. All of us who are parents know what we want for our children. We want them to have the best possible start in life. It must be difficult when one encounters difficulties that are perhaps caused by the vested interests of professionals. The Parliament should begin to tackle those vested interests across the spectrum. Parents and their children are the key to the solution of special educational needs—not the vested interests of one profession or another, or one party political interest or another. Those children must receive the best education that they can.
Perhaps the most powerful evidence that the committee took was from parents and children. They have the experience and they gave us their views and interpretation of what is happening. Time and again, they told us that the present system is not good enough and must be changed and that the record-of-needs system is wrong. It does not meet the needs of children and does not enable people to respond to those needs. It is not serving children well.
While I welcome the Executive's consultation document on assessment and recording arrangements, I do not agree with some of the document's recommendations or with the manner in which the Executive is raising the debate. The Education, Culture and Sport Committee will certainly want to consider that document.
I will conclude with a comment on Cathie Craigie's speech. Like me, she is a strong advocate for a special educational needs school in her constituency, about which she has lobbied my colleagues and me frequently. I hope that the debate will lead to her accepting that none of us want to do anything that would put the future of the Craighalbert Centre—or of any of the other excellent special schools in Scotland—in jeopardy. We must consider the funding mechanism, but that does not mean that there is no future for those schools.
As a Parliament, we can work together to bring the best possible opportunities to every child in Scotland. Parents should not be forced to choose between sending their child away from home from Monday to Friday or keeping their child at home to give them the best education. They should have a choice—if they want their child to stay at home, their child's education should be provided by trained staff, and the best possible educational opportunities should be available in their local authority area. There may well be a role for our national centres of excellence in providing the necessary training and support to local authority staff. Those centres may have another role as schools for children who have profound special needs. The Parliament will continue to debate that.
I welcome the debate and, on behalf of the committee, I thank all those who contributed to it.