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We now come to our second evidence session in our short inquiry into support for pupils with persistent absence. I welcome you all to the meeting.
Billy Anderson is head of services and influencing at Children in Scotland; Gavin Yates is executive director at Connect; and Lisa Weylandt is senior policy and public affairs officer at Includem. Thank you all very much for your written submissions to the committee.
Before we hear from other members, I have a question to ask you. Last week I raised the fact that
“Pupils with additional support needs are around 40 per cent more likely to be persistently absent, and almost half of secondary pupils now have an identified additional support need.”—[Official Report, Education and Gaelic Committee, 3 November 2026; c 1.]
I am interested in your thoughts about that. How well do we understand which children—in particular, neurodivergent children—are persistently absent, and why? Are schools equipped to respond to those different needs?
Good morning, everyone. We find that a lot of the children and young people we support who are absent have either diagnosed or undiagnosed neurodiversity. We feel that schools try really hard to make adjustments for young people. Sometimes that concerns the size of classrooms, or other students can be difficult. Young people experience bullying and they can feel isolated and stigmatised. Although efforts are being made, we do not know that the resources are sufficient for the adjustments to be put in place.
The majority of the people who contact our helpline and access Children in Scotland’s services have additional support needs—as that is what the services are designed for. A consistently high percentage of inquiries to our services involve issues around attendance. They can involve a wide variety of things. The attendance issue should not just be considered as a need for additional support. It can concern the whole situation for the child or young person. It can involve their whole family situation. There can be a multitude of different reasons why a young person may become persistently absent.
Although schools try very hard, the support that schools put in place for children and young people is very inconsistent across different local authorities. As Lisa Weylandt has said, there are resourcing issues. To my mind, however, the blame should not purely lie with resourcing; there are also cultural issues, such that things are inconsistent across local authorities.
It is nice to be able to agree with both my colleagues, who have knocked the proverbial nail on the head.
Connect, the organisation that I represent, did a lot of work this time last year. We did a whole survey into attendance issues, in the main. In the focus group work that we did after that, we spoke to lots of sets of parents, and they consistently told us that the lack of consistency between schools was a big problem. Some schools managed things really well, while that was certainly not the case in others. Something like half the parents whose children were long-term absent were receiving communications from the school once a term. That is not adequate. There needs to be national consistency to ensure that that happens more frequently.
We got lots of evidence about parents and young people not being listened to. The return-to-school plans were not being communicated to them and were not being arranged with them. There need to be better, clearer channels of communication between parents and carers and school staff. We need a more compassionate system, too.
Another aspect is that, when young people start to be absent, rather than blaming the child or the parents, we should look at the systemic issues that might make that the case. Kids do not just want to drop out of school; there is usually a prime mover for that.
I do not want to bombard you with lots of statistics; I can do that until the cows come home, but I would rather write to the committee, and you can look at that at your will. However, I will share a little anecdote from this weekend. On Sunday morning, I spoke to a set of parents whose child is 14. He is a good lad—I know the young man in question. He is struggling at school, which he absolutely hates. He is on a part-time timetable, which is a normal approach for some schools, but it is not working for him. When his parents picked him up on Friday this week, he got in the car and said, “I do not know why I am here. I want to die.” When for some young people the horror of school is so awful that they get suicidal ideation because school is not working for them, there is a problem.
My final point is one that you made, convener, which is absolutely right. When 50 per cent of pupils in our secondary schools have some kind of additional support need, is that mainstream education any more? Does mainstream education have to fundamentally change to encompass all neurodivergent children, or are we going to continue to fail them all?
Thank you, Gavin. On the example that you just gave of that one young guy, is he being listened to? Is there feedback from these young people? Does he get to say, “This is exactly the reason why I do not want to be at school”—
Yes.
—and is that being taken into consideration?
I apologise, convener. You can imagine my emotion around this.
That young man had wanted to try to make his way out of school. He was promised some kind of vocational route away from the school environment, which was causing him so much trauma and distress, and nothing has happened. I will be honest with you: now he is going to try to make his way to April—legally, he probably cannot go before then. His parents now are thinking, “Do we try to move schools? Do we try to home educate?” This is a failure, and I wish that I could say it was not a common or garden situation, but it is. Colleagues of mine at the Scottish Assembly of Parents and Carers have been running focus groups in the past two weeks, which we have not published on yet. I am reminded of a quote from that work, from about a week ago. A young person said something like, “I am in the class, I am sitting with the class, the teacher is talking to the class, but I am not actually included in the class.”
We are great in this country at measuring whether kids turn up to school. I will get a message on my mobile phone if one of mine is five minutes late, and that is brilliant. What we do not measure is whether they are being included and educated while they are at school. There is a chronic problem of young people who might be in the classroom but are not learning. Who is recording what is going on there? It is not happening.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming. Which schools are getting it right and what are they doing well? We hear a lot about what is going wrong, but where are there examples of this working?
For me, this is key: it is schools that have an ethos of inclusion. Educational theorists such as Professor John Hattie say that there are two indications of good schools: strong leadership and strong teachers. If you have both great leadership with a compassionate ethos and great partnerships with parents, you have a chance.
Can you say in practical terms what that looks like in day-to-day experience?
First, make sure that, if attendance starts to drop off, conversations are had with parents and the young person at the earliest point. Secondly, look at where problems may be systemic. Do not automatically say, “Well, there is obviously a problem with Johnny,” when there probably is not but there is a problem with the school—the set-up or the fit of how things work together. The good schools are the ones that identify how they can alter things to make sure that they tailor the education to the individual, not to the other 27 kids in the class.
Can you give us examples of what that looks like? I am trying to get specific answers, because we have heard quite a lot about culture and ethos, but we need to understand what this looks like for a child or a class or a parent. That would be helpful.
10:45
I cannot turn around to you and say, “Well, look at the example of X primary or X high school,” although I have seen good examples on my travels. However, I would say that it is about having a leadership culture that has an ethos of compassion, as well as open forms of communication and an education department at council level that backs these things.
There are also examples of extra provision for young people whose needs are not profound enough for special education but who are not being effectively managed in mainstream. Those third way options can be home bases or inclusion centres, which are a halfway house for children who are struggling in mainstream but whose needs are not profound enough for special education. Such provision is a way of making sure that they can be listened to, supported, welcomed to school and kept involved.
I will turn to the other two panel members, Billy Anderson and Lisa Weylandt. Do you know of an example of a school where provision works really well or a local authority that is succeeding in offering alternative provision that meets the children’s needs?
I would not necessarily point out one particular local authority or school, but we have heard of good examples across the country, where schools have been really flexible and tried to get to know the individual child. For us, that relationship aspect is fundamental and makes such a difference.
Why will you not name a school?
Because I do not know the schools—I only know the local authorities. One good example is in Stirling; I also have good examples from Glasgow and a good example from Aberdeen, so they do exist. It seems to us that, rather than being about the schools themselves, it is very much about individual teachers and headteachers who decide to invest in children and take that forward.
Similarly to Lisa Weylandt, I would not name an individual school, because we hear examples from multiple local authorities across the country. Within one school, there can be a difference in culture, even if the leadership is quite strong. I always remember going to a session at which we were talking about school behaviour and I was sitting around a table with multiple school leaders. A school leader said that they knew that a member of staff was behaving in an inappropriate way and was not supporting a young person’s learning, but the leader’s approach to that was, ”But we know it’s them—what can you do about that?” I was thinking, “You’re the school leader and the headteacher, so it’s your job to make sure you do that.” There is that kind of difference of culture within a school, and I will give you an example of that.
Previously, I worked in a service where there was a young autistic lad who had been out of school for around a year and a half. We worked super hard on building his confidence and making him see the benefit in returning to school to try to do his exams. We managed to get to a point where we could get him over the threshold of the school, and I was the person who took him into school. He was highly stressed and anxious, so he lay across the chairs in the waiting room, just to self-regulate. The first teacher who approached berated him and said, “Do you think it’s appropriate to lie across there? Other people need to use those seats.” He sat up and got even more highly stressed, but a minute later, another teacher come along the corridor and said, “Hi, how are you doing? No seen you for a while. Come on, let’s hae a chat and talk about what you’ve done.” He never even gave me eye contact; he focused on the child and gave me a wee wink as he led him down the corridor. That contrast and the difference of culture within the school was stark.
There are pockets of good practice in multiple schools, so it is just about consistency across the board. As Gavin Yates said, it takes strong and committed leadership. It is difficult to implement person-centred processes and systems, and that is why they work. Schools need to commit to making that a whole-school ethos.
If a child is beginning to struggle to attend school—becoming what one might call a persistent non-attender—and the parent struggles to get the child to get to school, various judgments can be made about that, but I am more interested in whose job it is, in the school or elsewhere in the local authority, to help get that child to school. Whose job should it be?
To help get the child to school?
Yes. We found it quite difficult to get an answer to this last week. When the parents are clearly struggling to get the child out of the house and into school, whose role is it to get them to school?
It is a partnership. The Education (Scotland) Act 1980 says that it is a parent’s job to get a child to school. Great—you can get the kid to school, but it does not mean that they are being educated. They can be sat there—that is great and fantastic; well done, that is a box ticked, which looks good—but effective partnerships are what make it work. It is about parents working with the local authority and the school leaders, with a shared ambition of tailoring education that is right for that young person. It is as simple as that.
You would be surprised, because you would think that all teachers get ASN education as part of their initial teacher education, but some do and some do not. Where is the continuing professional development for teachers and others who work with young people? It is sketchy and sometimes absent. This is an evolving area of public policy and I do not think that the effort is being put in to make sure that we deliver for our young people.
I get that, for whatever reason, the parent cannot get the child to school, and even if we can force a child into that environment, they are not going to be regulated to cope with that situation. Who therefore should be going out to the house, if that is necessary or appropriate, to engage with that child and family to give them the confidence to re-engage in the school environment? Would that be social work, a third sector organisation or the school itself?
It is something that the third sector does very well. We do a lot of whole family support, recognising—I think that this came up in committee last week—that education is really a whole society and a whole family issue. Parents, siblings and communities are impacted. However, I would not want to say that it is necessarily everyone’s job, because we sometimes then end up with nobody taking the lead and nobody signing anything off.
It is about partnership working, but with clear accountability for who is ultimately in charge of ensuring that resources are made available and support is put in place. We have cases of young people on part-time timetables that drift and drift. The third sector organisation can do everything that they want to get that child or young person ready to continue or maybe even increase their hours, but if that support is not forthcoming from schools, it does not work.
It is about partnership working, but schools need to ensure that education is being provided, whether in schools or in specialist settings. Schools really should provide that input.
I would echo that. We need to distinguish between attending school and attending education, because a child should be attending education in whatever form, and a school should be providing that education. We get many accounts through our Enquire helpline where a child has been provided with education at home for a short period of time and then it is withdrawn, or they have been promised education at home and they have waited for months for it. We will probably talk about anxiety at some point today, but that raises anxiety in the child and the parent about when that education is coming. If it does not come, the trust between the child and parent and the school goes.
You talk about partnerships, but when trust is gone from a partnership, it is very difficult to rebuild. That whole family support approach and multi-agency support, and the correct recording of the amount of education that the child is receiving, are far more important than any attendance data in a particular school.
We have a problem in that, due to how our society is run, the third sector organisations get short-term, part-time contracts. They are seen as nice to have, but they are not seen as essential and they will not be available universally. From my experience of working in the third sector as a youth worker, I know that, for the child, the consistency of a relationship matters. The child does not give a damn what job title you have or who employs you; it is Lisa who turns up. It is about that personal trust, which you mentioned in your evidence, and when the person changes, that is it—the child is not going to have it.
It is about having that role as part of the system. Maybe it could be part of a guidance teacher’s mandate. From what you are saying, it needs that type of person—that leadership—but how do we ensure that the responsibility sits with the school or with social work? Who says, “Yes, this child is coming to be educated in an appropriate environment, and we are making sure that they are engaged”? Without that, I am seeing that they can be at home or on a part-time timetable that is not meeting their needs, or they can be doing internal truancy, if you like. Therefore, who is getting hold of the children who are really struggling and saying, “You are my kid. You are going to know that I care about you and I will make sure that you engage”?
I think that you have answered your own question, Duncan. It has to be somebody.
But we do not have that role at the moment.
No—indeed not. There is some sensitivity about this. You can imagine how, if we said, “It’s going to be the headteacher’s role,” that could cause issues with parents, who might think that some of it should be up to them, too.
Perhaps the buck has to stop somewhere, but there could be much more of a partnership approach, where folk are working together in the interests of the child. Schools sometimes have a very different view about what is working with Johnny—as it were. The school might say, “We just need to get him into school, and we’ll sort him out afterwards.” That might not work—it might not be the best approach. It is a matter of having conversations with young people, their mums and dads and educators—and perhaps clinicians, too—to find the best possible plan.
To answer the question, I would say that this is perhaps not about individuals or the system; it is about having a plan in place. At the first instances of the absence, we should ensure that we have a strong, robust plan, which will be measured. Billy Anderson alluded to this: being in school but not being educated is a huge thing.
A lot of members here will be in the chamber this afternoon, because your whips will have written your report and they have said, “Right, chamber duty for you, you and you.” You will sit there from 5 to 2 until 5 o’clock or whenever you vote. Perhaps you do not catch the Presiding Officer’s eye when you want to make that killer intervention, so you just sit there until 5 o’clock, and then you press your button. Imagine doing that from 9 o’clock in the morning until 3.30 from Monday to Friday—sitting in the chamber and never catching the Presiding Officer’s eye. You would not stand for it. And guess what—if you get a new mobile phone, you get told off. Perhaps Mr Gibson will start thinking about that in future, but who knows?
That is why you should be a Liberal Democrat, as we do not get chamber duty—I am just saying.
Mr Dunlop, I am sure that you are there every afternoon.
I am taking up too much time with this, but is there anyone who could consider the specific role? Should we have a role with a duty relating to people who are persistently absent—someone whose job would be in the school environment, who would make it happen?
We should not have one particular person. In my opinion, it should be the person who knows the child best, if we are going to be person centred about the whole thing. I used to work in front-line services, and the person who made the connections with all the multi-agency people would be the person co-ordinating the meetings, and people would look towards them. I think that we should get rid of the whole hierarchy, with the idea that it needs to be social work or an educational psychologist, say. It needs to be the person who knows the child and the family best. That is the person who should be getting the child into school.
That is a good point to hold on to. Sometimes an issue can become part of someone’s case load, and there might be a person who holds responsibility for so many children without knowing the child or having time to understand the child. It is absolutely as Billy Anderson has said.
I spent many days trying to catch the Speaker’s eye in the House of Commons, only to be ignored for days at a time.
But you are married to our one. [Laughter.]
Moving swiftly on.
We have heard a lot of evidence from the witnesses today about attendance, which has also featured in written and oral evidence in previous weeks. We all want to get to the same place, and we realise that there is a real problem in our schools, with some children not attending.
I would like to project this point forward, as it goes to the heart of what school is for. I was an English teacher for 25 years, so I will use the example of English. It is about more than passing your higher English; school is about so much more than that. When we are thinking about what school is for, we are really thinking about what sort of citizens pupils will be. We are trying to shape young citizens so that they can go out and live the best, most fulfilling lives that they can.
This is only me surmising this; I wonder whether you have read or done any work on this. It strikes me that, if children are not at school, they are probably more likely to face child protection challenges, and they are more likely to encounter the criminal justice system in the longer term. They are more likely to be economically inactive when they are of working age. They are more likely to have poorer long-term physical and mental health. Those are lots of reasons to get kids to school. Do you know of any academic work or studies that have been done that demonstrate those links clearly? From where I am standing, they seem to be probable. However, I do not have any evidence of that.
11:00
Those links are well established. There is a lot of academic evidence on that regarding people’s introduction to the criminal justice system, including a large-scale study on the effect of schooling by a former governor at His Majesty’s Prison and Young Offenders Institution Polmont.
Certain elements are allied to that. Low levels of literacy give people a much higher chance of entering the criminal justice system. Those who needed, but did not receive, speech therapy have a much higher chance of entering the criminal justice system. There is no doubt about it, Mrs Gibson. You highlight the point about school being good for young people, and that is why this issue is so important. We need young people in school.
I return to the initial question about what education is for. That comes back to the Latin “educere”, which means to draw out. We need to draw out and make the best of our young people. Unfortunately, I do not think that our education system is best at bringing the best out of all our young people. We have already heard today that children with additional support needs are behind their mainstream peers. There is no doubt about that; the evidence on that is absolutely clear. In some ways, they are slightly forgotten. Those young people are not particularly academic in their outlook. Where is the parity of esteem with vocational education and academic education? There is no parity.
You mentioned that you were an English specialist, and that is fabulous. One of my children is doing higher English this year, and he is very much enjoying his course, which is fabulous. However, I note that, whenever there is any discussion in the media on qualifications, it is always about nat 5 and higher. When was the last time you read an article discussing the pass rates at nat 4 or vocational education or national progression awards? Those are important awards, and they can be a pathway towards work. That is really important, too—it is vital.
The problem is that our education system is very much based on a factory system: we bring people in, we educate them and we spit them out at the other end, hopefully with the qualifications either to go on to work or to go to university. However, university is not really an option for about 40 per cent of young people. We need to do a lot more to ensure that those young people feel included and involved, and to find a positive destination for them.
You are absolutely right: if young people drop out of school early, the chances of their moving on to a positive destination become a lot more constrained.
I will come to Lisa Weylandt and Billy Anderson in a minute, but I would slightly take issue with you about not counting nat 4s. In secondary schools where children are in danger of not achieving nat 5, there is a real emphasis—rightly or wrongly—on getting them through nat 4, so that they have something to show that they have achieved or reached.
I completely agree. My point was: when did you ever read in an editorial in The Times, The Scotsman, The Herald or anywhere else about that? We simply do not see that. The public focus is about “the national qualifications”, as the press calls them. By that, it means nat 5 and higher.
Do you think that part of the problem is intergenerational and therefore cultural, which is why it is so difficult to make the inroads that we would like? Cultural barriers are difficult to break down.
There is plenty of evidence that, if parents had a very poor experience of school, that sometimes goes down the ages, unfortunately. For some, it can be very much the opposite: it is a bump up. Different folks, different strokes.
My organisation represents parent councils, and some parents would love to be more involved in their school community. On the other hand, some parents had such a hideous time and were humiliated at school that they do not want to go anywhere near it again, despite the fact that they would love to be there to support their young people.
I do not have any examples of academic pieces of work on that. However, I want to highlight how children feel when they are not included or engaged with. We have heard a lot from children and young people saying that they feel really different, that things are too much for them and that their needs are more than the system can handle. When that messaging is internalised in children who are so young, it can set them up for a particularly tricky life or it can create additional challenges for them.
Although I do not have any studies to quote, I can tell you, from the children with whom we work, about the immediate and long-term impacts when their environment is missing the socialisation element and all the other things that we have mentioned that are part of school but not about learning. That has a significant impact on children in the long term.
If children do not attend school regularly, that has a longer-term impact in these specific areas. If you take groups of children out of that, you can say that, for example, children with additional support for learning needs will be affected longer term anyway, whether they are in school or not. In the same way as a lot of kids who are living in poverty, they will probably be negatively affected, no matter what their education is.
On the wider point of what education is, the purpose of a school is to get children to function in, and connect with, society. Examinations and qualifications are secondary to that. Our inclusion ambassadors, which is a group of young people who act as advisers, say that success looks different for everyone. Over the past two or three years, we have held the success looks different awards for schools that can demonstrate their support of that. Success should not only be measured by exam results; it should be measured by how a young person feels. That is right at the heart of what a school is for. As Patricia Gibson said, school is for far more than that. It is about how young people connect with other people; it is about developing skills for life and friendships for life.
We should be asking children and young people what success means to them. The constant pressure of having to come up to a mark, if you like, and the tests that measure only how well pupils can recall what they have learned over the past four years in order to get a piece of paper, do not fit with the way that the world is at the moment.
There is the even bigger question regarding what the point of education is. It was mentioned that it was set up for factories and so on in the past. We need to accept that society is changing. If we do not move with society and involve children and young people in what their vision for the future is, everybody will fail. We need to be superflexible. There is an opportunity to do that through education reform, but I am worried that that will not go wide enough. If we are going to do it, we need to hit the reset button and get children and young people involved.
Of course, all those things are impacted disproportionately by poverty. We want children to be ambitious, but there is far less opportunity for social mobility now than there has been at any time since the war. It is much more difficult.
We talked earlier about colleges and the idea that, if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. In communities that are afflicted by poverty, there are not enough examples to look at, because social mobility is so dumbed down. That militates against ambition and what school might be able to offer some of those children.
Ambition has shifted, too. A lot of people look at various sources for ambition and to see what is possible in the future. On role models in communities, you talked about intergenerational issues, and, again, society has shifted to a huge degree. If we do not help young people to connect with what it means to be an active member of society as it is today, they will have a completely distorted vision of what society is like, or have a competing vision with that of their parents. Where will they lie in that? We have to listen to them and find out what their visions for the future are.
The social mobility issue that Patricia Gibson raised is interesting, because if you are a pupil at a school in one of the more disadvantaged areas of Scotland, you will have fewer subject choices than if you are at a school in a more advantaged area. How is there any equity in education? How is there any equality in that?
If you are growing up in some parts of Scotland and you want to study economics, for example, you will be told, “No, you can’t do that.” If you want to study Spanish, you will be told, “No, we haven’t got a Spanish specialist—you can’t do that.” That is par for the course these days. There are young people from working-class backgrounds who are deeply aspirational—they really want to get on in life and make the best of it—but it is a case of “Computer says no. You can’t do that. We can maybe offer you history instead.” That is not really fair, is it?
Sadly, that has always been the case.
Thanks for your evidence so far; we are hearing consistent themes in this discussion.
As you all represent children and parent-focused organisations, I want to ask a question that touches on Duncan Dunlop’s point. Gavin Yates, you said that parents get their kids to school. Through our casework, we hear from a lot of parents who do that but then get a phone call saying, “I’m sorry, can you come and pick them up? They’re not coping. The school is not coping.” Who is accountable in that situation? How do we embed rights realisation into our education system? A lot of parents feel that school is not working for their children, for whatever reason, and they do not know where to go. It then comes down to which parents can advocate the best, which becomes an equity issue.
That takes us back to some of the opening questions. As you pointed out, when you have a situation in which the school cannot cope with a child—Johnny, if you like—the question is, “Why not?” Lots of parents will come to my organisation and my colleagues’ organisations and say, “Mainstream education is not right for my child. They need to be in a different setting.” I have spoken with parents about exactly that in the past couple of months.
That goes back to my earlier point about individuals whose requirements are not so profound that they need to be in specialist education but who find that mainstream education is not working for them. What are the options for them? They are limited, and they are shrinking. I regularly have parents coming to me in tears, saying, “I know the type of school my child needs to go to.” They say that their child needs smaller class sizes, one-on-one provision, and this, that and the other. The problem is that, if the resources are not there, they are not there. We need to be honest with ourselves about this. Who do we want to make decisions about what will best meet the needs of a child? Do we want it to be parents, educators, clinicians or accountants? You choose.
I am sorry, but can you remind me what the original issue was?
The question was about how parents advocate for their children within the system. We have the headteacher, the local authority, the education director and the social worker—if social work is involved. To whom do parents speak? How do they realise their rights in this quite complex system?
For parents in that scenario, it is all about the availability of information and information sharing. We run the Enquire helpline, which is designed for that purpose. Often, parents call the helpline and say, “This is what’s been tried, this is what’s been put in place; this is what we like, and this is what we see would work, but how do we go about doing that?” We can provide that information: we tell people what their rights are, what they should be getting and what the law says. However, we know full well that, 90 per cent of the time, they will not get that in real life.
It is difficult. We have highly emotive telephone calls, but we need to be open and honest with people and say, “This is what you should be getting. We know that it’s difficult and this might not happen, but what else can we try and how else can we support you to get your view across? Can we create a template letter for you that helps you get your point across to school?”
We are a very small organisation that can do that in pockets. We also do loads of outreach work with parents and carers, and sometimes parents and carers will bring their children along to those sessions, but information needs to be tailored in the way that parents want to receive it. Parents have told us that they do not want to receive information just fae a website or phone a helpline. They need the information fae multiple places. We host online and in-person sessions, and information must be tailored to what people need, because people need to be supported through receiving the information.
11:15
It is also not good enough that the third sector has to try to put together the pieces of the puzzle to give people that information. It should be coming fae the source. As soon as an absence is flagged as an issue, that information should be coming fae the local authority and the school. In my opinion, and as I have seen over the years, some schools will wait until the absolute last minute before they refer to someone else to ask for help. They just do not want to say “We can’t help. Help us.” They do not ask for help quickly enough. Given that we are sitting there with loads of resources and connections, it would be far easier if schools would press that button a bit earlier. It is about timing.
It is also about the method that is used to get information to parents—it needs to be provided in a way that they want to receive it. Further, it is about supporting parents through this, because we are not just talking about absence but about the most precious thing to them: their kids.
I would agree with everything that has been said. It is also worth remembering that parents often face similar challenges to those that face some of the children and young people we are talking about, such as poverty. Digital exclusion can be an issue for some families.
The third sector can be really helpful in supporting families on that journey and advocating alongside them. My colleagues will go to school meetings. They will be alongside families advocating for their children. The issue is whether that support is triggered and whether it is available.
Gavin Yates, you said earlier that we need a national approach to sharing best practice. That theme is coming out clearly—we need consistency in data and how things are measured. How do you see that national approach working? What would you like the committee to do to take that approach forward? What would be some of the barriers to doing that?
I should have answered your earlier question properly. I think that I failed to do so.
At the moment, this is what tends to happen if parents realise that there is a problem. They complain to or raise the issue with the school. The school says, “Well, there’s probably not a lot we can do.” The parents then complain to the education authority through a stage 1 complaint, which turns into a stage 2 complaint. The complaint ends up with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman probably 17 weeks later, and then the ombudsman probably closes it. All that is left is perhaps a stage 1 tribunal, at which the chances of success are limited.
I highlight the excellent work that Enquire does. We do lots of online sessions with Enquire, because it is an important organisation for us and for mums and dads. It really supports them.
A proper national standard is needed. If a parent or somebody else who cares desperately for a child—it could be a teacher—raises the issue that the child needs more support, we need a proper process that enables that to be fast tracked. As committee members have heard, at the moment, if someone says, “We suspect that Johnny has ADHD,” the response is to wait for perhaps three years and then see where to go to get a clinical diagnosis. That is fine, because support is provided straight away, apart from when it is not, because the local authority wants to see a diagnosis first, although it breaks its own rules.
We need a proper process that parents can rely on, with stages A, B, C and D. Parents should be secure in the knowledge that, at every stage, everything that should be done—everything that is reasonable and practicable—is being done. A proper, robust approach is needed. As Billy Anderson said, it is about timing and ensuring that the process is speedy and efficient. It might take two years for a piece of legislation to go through the Parliament, and the implementation period might be another two years, so that would be four years—a child’s entire senior phase at school—gone in a bang. It is really important that there is immediate action.
I agree with everything that Gavin Yates has said. My only concern is that, as soon as we talk about process, alongside that often comes certain language, with various understanding and meanings. As Katherine Sangster mentioned, a certain type of person or demographic can access that type of information, whereas other people are left by the wayside. That is not good enough.
There needs to be infrastructure around that system. From our outreach work, we know that we cannae reach every parent in the country, so we partner up with people who work in communities. We reach out to communities and ask which organisations—it might be Includem—are working with families. We think about whether we can partner with and upskill that organisation, with reference to all the legislation, and we try to communicate what is technical information to parents so that they understand it and access support. A network of information, connections and partnerships needs to be built before systems that people can access are put in place. If we put systems in place first, only certain people will access them. We need to put in the work to provide the networks and the information, with partnerships to support that.
We were talking about Johnny earlier. I think that every child should be treated as an individual and should have their needs met. What would be the solution to that? Should there be a separate classroom or a smaller class, or should that pupil be out of school altogether?
It should potentially be all of the above. If mainstream education is not working effectively for a young person, we need to come up with different methodologies. I work with a lot of parents, who will say that their young person needs more specialist work with teachers who have great experience of working with, say, autistic young people. That might be the best fit for that young person. In relation to the parents I spoke to at the weekend and the horrific story that I told earlier, school will probably not work for that particular young person, but some form of vocational education, with core skills being backed up, might be a better treatment. There needs to be individualisation.
Mainstream education will work for the majority of our young people but, for those it does not work for, it really does not work, and those young people get left behind. As Patricia Gibson said, those are the people who will cost society more in the long term through economic inactivity and will have a greater chance of having a relationship with the criminal justice system.
It might seem expensive to parliamentarians to say that we will have to come up with extra provision, but doing so bakes in more success for the future.
I agree. We have to consider the future that we are going to provide.
Did we not have something like that years ago? I am sure that, in the 1990s, we had special schools for children who struggled in mainstream schools. I am sure that we did where I lived. However, everything then got pushed back into mainstream schools.
There have been lots of examples of really good approaches over the years. The sure start system from the 1990s was beneficial.
I wonder whether we could go back and see why we changed that system.
There was a push, quite rightly, to recognise that some people with disabilities had been forced into specialist schools where they did not need to be—where they were excluded and faced being labelled at a very early age. The genuine push towards more mainstream education was a good thing. However, there will always be people at the margins for whom that will not work.
I return to the point about individualised, tailored education that takes into account the needs of the individual, rather than a cohort.
Without anybody being labelled.
Correct.
That means having a choice of what school to send children to.
I have spoken to parents, and I have young children, too. If some children are disruptive in class, that affects the whole class—it is not just about that person. A parent I spoke to said, “He does not behave like that at home. He gets with his mates and all hell breaks loose, but the teacher will not tell him off.” We seem to have gone too far the other way in some cases.
I hear a lot of anecdotes exactly like that. However, it might be worth thinking about the reasons for it. Could it be that a different approach needs to be taken by the teacher in that particular classroom? Could it be that a number of individuals are not being challenged and are not having their needs met, and they become disruptive? I work with a lot of parents whose children are highly able—you could call them wee geniuses. However, if they are not challenged in the way that we would like, they can also become disruptive.
Again, it is about providing individualised, tailored education, which, by the way, is really difficult to do. I feel sorry for teachers. If there are 28 young people in a classroom, some of whom are really toiling in making the level of progress that we would wish them to make, while others perhaps think that the work is far too easy for them, how do we expect one educator to deliver to all those markets at the same time? The answer is that we need more pupil support assistants in our classrooms, and we need more teachers.
I find it remarkable that, at the moment, we have a so-called oversupply of primary teachers. I would love currently unemployed primary teachers to be in our schools, helping our young people to develop their talents and raise their expectations.
I definitely agree with that. When I visited a school recently, that was the exact position. A mixed-age class, from primary 4 to primary 7, was being taught by one teacher. She would relish having a classroom assistant, but there just is not the funding, so that definitely needs to be looked at.
Rural schools particularly struggle with that issue, and teaching composite classes makes it more difficult.
I will defer to my colleagues on this issue.
On the point about individualised learning, I go back to my earlier point that person-centred approaches are easy to talk about but not so easy to put in place. You must commit to that approach if you are going to take it.
On what is key in that regard, I will once again bang the drum for listening to children and young people. It is far too easy to think that we know what is right and what they need. We must involve them in discussions about how they want to learn and what their learning should look like. As I said, putting in place a person-centred approach is difficult—nobody is holding it up as an easy thing to do.
I totally empathise with a teacher in a class with X number of pupils who is trying to educate each of them. I go back to these questions. What is the education system for? Why are we putting loads of kids with various needs into the same class and expecting one person to stand at the front of the room and teach to a set curriculum so that the kids can gain a qualification? How does that even work? What is the role of a teacher in that situation?
It is impossible for them to see to everybody’s needs.
Totally. Are we training teachers in the right way to teach the kids of this generation?
That approach works for some, but it does not work for everybody. However, if the presumption is mainstreaming, with everyone in the same school being taught the same curriculum, we must adapt to that system.
We work with a number of children for whom there are great examples of creative approaches to their learning. They spend some of their time in their mainstream school and some of it at a pupil support unit. Some of them get learning that they take home. Such approaches exist. The ones that work best are those that are led by the child and that speak to what they are interested in and what they need.
We find great success in such approaches, with young people perhaps coming back to education a little more. Those approaches also increase their confidence and their ability to engage with others and make friends. Doing more of that would be absolutely welcome.
Billy Anderson, I would like to ask you about anxiety and unmet need, because that issue came across strongly in your written evidence and in what you have said so far. What practical interventions appear to be making a difference in helping young people to re-engage with education after a period of absence?
We need to understand where a young person’s anxiety originates. Anxiety should not be used as an explanation for absences—it is an outcome. What is that anxiety caused by? Is it caused by a young person’s neurodivergence? Is it caused by environmental triggers or poor design of the school? Is it caused by bullying? Is it caused by systemic poverty? Is it caused by constant academic pressure? There are multiple types of anxiety that a young person might experience, and we must not collapse all of them into one issue and call it anxiety. That is why people misunderstand the whole issue. They say, “There wasn’t as much anxiety in my day, but everybody seems to have it now.” You hear that all the time, but everybody has experienced anxiety. We experience it as an outcome of something. It is not something that prevents you from doing something, but there is something that causes it.
11:30
We absolutely need interventions that help with anxiety. A person-centred approach, for example, involves sitting with a young person to understand where the anxiety comes from. If your question is about how we can successfully intervene to stop anxiety, we need to take tiny baby steps with people and try to rebuild their confidence in what they are trying to achieve. We build their confidence by building their trust, so that they understand that we are really listening to them and understand their anxiety. It is about allowing them to take the tiniest steps that they can until they achieve wee bits of success and build on those. You cannot just put something in place and then expect, all of a sudden, there to be no anxiety and everything to be all right. It is not a case of someone saying, “That was yesterday and today I’m fine.” It is a long journey for people with anxiety.
I want to follow up on that with Lisa Weylandt. One part of the baby steps approach to intervention involves compressed timetables when children return to school. Your evidence highlights examples of children attending school for only an hour a day. How can local authorities ensure that a reduced timetable is temporary, is a baby step to something else and is educationally meaningful? It is hard to see how a child will get much educational value out of an hour a day at school.
There are two parts to the question. First, on monitoring, we are keen to see a bit more detail on how part-time timetables are recorded. In particular, as you referred to, we want to look at the educational input that is provided through part-time timetables. How long has the timetable been in place? What is the plan for progression? We do not want part-time timetables that never lead anywhere. That is especially the case when children ask for more contact time in school. We have cases in which children say that they want to be in school more, but it can be a slow process for schools to increase the child’s hours.
We also need better monitoring of what that feels like for the child. As the committee has heard previously, we can be good at recording things such as bums on seats, but we are not always good at finding out what something feels like for a child. Do they feel that the approach is working for them? Do they feel that they have a chance of returning to school, either full time or with more hours? That relates to the first question.
The other question was about the education that is provided. That is really tricky. A child might be in school for an hour a day, but that does not necessarily mean that they are accessing any meaningful learning. We know of examples in which children have, in essence, sat in a base for a couple of hours, had a good time and then gone home again. We need individualised planning and learning, and we need to think about what interests the young person. Can we be creative in how we teach them? That requires getting to know the child and listening to them, and it requires flexible resources around them.
I will add to what Lisa Weylandt has said. It might seem that placing a child in a learning base for an hour will fix a problem in that moment. However, we have been talking about anxiety, and that generates phenomenal anxiety in an autistic child, because they have no plan and no idea what they are meant to be doing there, which feeds into their anxiety instead of easing it. It might ease the situation for the school, but it does not ease it for the young person.
Anecdotally, I have heard from a lot of young people that they often find bases and hubs quite stigmatising, which does not necessarily help a child to ease into wider schooling.
I would like to pick up on some of the comments that Gavin Yates made earlier. I used to chair a parent council for a small rural primary school. We would often have 100 per cent attendance from the parent body. Every family would be represented, and sometimes both parents would attend. I went on to chair a parent council for a small rural secondary school, and we practically had to drag people to meetings. That made me think about early intervention, because attendance often does not become a major problem until secondary school. Parents often have fond memories of primary school, but they might not have them of secondary school. How can we make effective early interventions before attendance becomes an entrenched problem, especially at primary level, when there are good relations?
You raise a fantastic point and you are absolutely right. It is about trust and community. Primary schools have a more ingrained approach, because they are more community focused than some of our larger secondary schools—which, by the way, can be an absolute and utter nightmare for some children with additional support needs, because they are such vast and noisy places.
Billy Anderson made the point earlier that it is all about trust. For individuals who are, for instance, coming back to a part-time timetable, it is about having the same teacher there every day to welcome that young person and say, “Come on in.” It is about building that trust and relationship. That is the only way to make it work.
I am looking at the survey that we carried out last year, and this is a direct quote from one of our mums and dads:
“The school could have ensured transition into this year was carried out more thoroughly, to enable a relationship and trust to be built. There is one day a week with a different staff member which is very difficult and that staff member being prepared to offer pre-learning would have at least meant my child could have attempted to attend those days.”
You are right that it is a particular challenge for secondary schools to have an individualised relationship with a young person. I have an admission to make: I have only two children left at school and I am not sure whether I know the names of their guidance teachers at the moment, because they have changed recently. That is a terrible admission to make as a parent, but I do not think that that is unusual.
I have a final question for all of you. Let us fast forward to the end of this parliamentary session and say that, in 2031, this committee is looking at whether revised attendance guidance is actually making a difference. What evidence would you be looking for that would convince you that revised attendance guidance has actually made a difference to children and families?
I will kick off. What we need to do is measure what happens in schools, not just whether the kids are there at the school gate at the appointed time. That metric is not as important as measuring the quality of teaching and learning that is going on in a school at any one time. That is one thing that I would be looking for.
This may sound a little bit esoteric, but I do not think that it is, because it is about the happiness of young people. It is not at all flouncy, but really important. If we want children to have better attendance, school must be meaningful, challenging, supportive and individualised. If you want to go down this line, we should measure the real metrics of school, not how many nat 5s or highers a particular school has knocked out. Instead, we should measure the baseline of the young people when they entered the system, and what difference we made to those young people as they went through it. These metrics should not be just about qualifications. These days, the ability to communicate to a group of people, such as this committee, is probably a more advantageous skill than remembering the repeal of the corn laws.
I would love to be sitting here in 2031 witnessing something different. At the moment, we have data-heavy, relationship-light systems. I understand why that is, but it would be terrible if it remained that way, because systems need to evolve. If we are looking at what data we would want to see when we come in here in 2031, I would like to see meaningful participation of children and young people in analysing that data, and them being the people that come up with the systems, solutions and peer-led approaches to what makes things work.
We should be asking what strengths we can build on and what helps attendance, not what stops attendance. It should be about what works. That needs to be framed within children’s rights: children have a right to an education, and what we do should be framed within that.
There should be school climate measures within that, as Gavin Yates mentioned. How are children and young people experiencing school? We should be looking at data that tells us about belonging, safety, relationships and inclusion within the school, and what that means to the child or young person. We should also bring in the experience of parents. If you want to say that it is everybody’s job to educate the child, and if there is a partnership with parents, then the door should swing both ways. We need to ask parents’ opinion about how their child is when they get home.
For a child, the school day doesnae just start when they walk through the door; it starts fae the minute they wake up in the morning to the minute they go to bed at night—and everything else in between. It can fill a young person’s head completely throughout the whole week, and there is the knock-on effect on the finances, health and mental wellbeing of parents. It is all encompassing. We need to measure that stuff, because it is important.
I would love to be sitting here in the future having a conversation about this stuff really improving—not the numbers, but people’s experience.
As both my colleagues have said, we would be keen to see a move towards something embedded in children’s rights that captures children’s experiences of being in education, receiving education and accessing education, in whatever shape or form that might take for them individually. Data is really important, but we are keen that those voices and experiences are at the forefront of any changes that we make or of any future developments.
Good morning, everyone. I would like to start with something that Gavin Yates said about who you want to be making decisions for your children—parents, teachers, the children and young people themselves or accountants. I found that an interesting question from the perspective of dealing with education and decision making.
The last time I checked, about a quarter of the chief executives in local authorities came from a finance background. That changes the dynamics. If we are living in an environment of public sector reform, surely we should consider the delivery of the service. Nine times out of 10, in my previous experience as a councillor, if someone came from a finance background, it was that finance guy or finance woman who got the job. Is that part of the problem? Should we perhaps find the people who are actually delivering services for those posts?
My two colleagues have knocked the nail on the head on this point: the approach needs to be children’s rights based, which is about giving young people what they need, rather than saying, “If it’s not in the budget, you’re not getting it.”
The standard thing that I will get from a parent is: “My child is really struggling, they are not getting the support they need, and we really need a PSA.” The teacher will probably respond, “You know what? A PSA would make a big difference here.” The educational psychologist—who the parents need to use two buses to see—says, “You know, that would be a really good thing.” However, if the budget is not there, it is not there, and that is it. It turns into a situation where the decisions have perhaps been taken at a budget meeting years before—but who is to know what will go on in a particular area?
When I was a councillor, I used to work with an old social work director, who is retired now, but he got it—he understood it. He went for a chief executive job but never got it. I always use that as an example of someone who I believed could have made a difference to the lives of people in Renfrewshire, because of that background. It is an important part of the job to balance the books in local government—
Indeed.
The actual service is the important process as well, however. I feel that we are moving away from that ethos. Should we be considering that when we are talking about public sector reform?
Yes. Audit Scotland’s review of additional support for learning highlighted two main points. First, there were not enough resources—end of.
Secondly, parents ask me why ASL funding is not being ring fenced. I know that that is deeply controversial—I understand the Verity house agreement and all of that. However, mums and dads are saying to me, “My kids are special, and we at least should be able to ring fence the ASL budget.” A bit of me thinks that there are other things at play here, but I cannot formulate an argument against it. I am now speaking to teachers who are saying similar things—that maybe ring fencing is needed to make sure that the young people who need our support the greatest are not left at the bottom of the queue when it comes to resources.
11:45
There was a time when people with financial backgrounds got into certain positions because there was a need at that time, and the situation now is probably reflective of how society has moved as a whole. I spoke about evolution earlier. We need to see an evolution towards people having a multiple skill set of being able to deliver services but having financial nous as well.
Education is a right, not a requirement. In Scotland, we have amazing laws, and we should be proud of having the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child enshrined in law, but we are playing a bit of catch-up psychologically with what that actually means. If you are talking about finances and saving money, we must get this right, because children’s rights are in law now. It is not good enough to say that we will just put a plaster over it to fix it. This will come back to bite people if we do not get it right now, because when it is law, it is law. When the systems that will allow people to access the proper courses of redress for this are worked out, it could be catastrophic.
We need to get the right balance between having people with the right skill sets in the right positions to provide that social care background, and having people with financial nous, who know the benefit of partnering with other organisations and pooling resources to support the rights of children and young people. It is not just about balancing the books any more; you are balancing people’s lives.
Last week, I asked about how poverty creates barriers to young people going to school, and I have touched on that point today. Lisa Weylandt, in your written evidence, you gave a few examples of those barriers, including the ones that I asked about last week—transport, clothing, food and housing. Which of those barriers would you remove? If you were talking to local authorities and the Scottish Government, the removal of which barrier would you say would have the biggest impact when it comes to helping these young people to get to school?
Poverty impacts all areas of life for the children and families who we work with, so if we were to tackle and eradicate child poverty, that would certainly make a huge difference to children across the country. That would be it, because poverty touches on everything.
Gavin, do you have something to add?
Yes, I will come in on that one, because you raise a really important issue. I concur with my colleague. Poverty is the biggest scourge in children’s lives—there is no doubt about that—but your point about transport is very apposite. We know that councils are under pressure, and increasing numbers of local authorities are reducing their transport availability, for both ASN children and most other children. A lot of local authorities take a 3-mile view rather than a 2-mile view. That provision is diminishing all the time. At least three local authorities in the past three years have gone to the Government minimum, and there is no doubt that that has an effect on attendance. That is particularly the case with local authorities that have decided to go for a nine-period week—a four-and-a-half-day week—because it is easier to deal with teacher contracts. We know the reason why they have made that decision—it is a way of saving money.
Can you imagine if you are a secondary pupil and on a Friday morning, you have core physical education and personal and social education? Do you reckon that you will go to school in February if it will take you 45 minutes to walk there and 45 minutes to walk back? Probably not. Trying to save a few quid in local government budgets by reducing the quality and experience of school transport can have a knock-on effect on attendance.
The bus one is a classic example, because councils do it. When I was a councillor, we did that. Politically, it was probably one of the biggest mistakes that I have made in my life, because the local campaign became overwhelming and we went back on that decision. You tend to find that that is what ends up happening.
It is always better that a sinner repenteth. [Laughter.]
Well, I cannae get it right all the time—just 90 per cent.
At least three local authorities have gone down that line in the past few years. Unfortunately, the directors of education who were responsible for that, along with their political masters, refused to even meet parents. It was shameful.
Part of the reason why we made a difference is that we went around to meet the parents and they said, “That’s not going to work”.
Last week, I asked about another issue with regard to getting young people back to school, and I have probably asked you about it before, Gavin, when you have been giving evidence. There are various soft-setting resets to get young people back to school, which involve them doing things that they actually like. Last week, I used the example of St Mirren, which does various things in football, and I heard in the previous committee that Spartans on the east coast is very good. It has a soft-setting restart for young people to go to.
Is there scope for more of that work, not as a full-time replacement for school, but as a way to re-engage young people through whatever they are interested in? Is there a place for that in order to try to get young people back into the school environment?
Planning, tailored, child centred—all of the above. Third sector organisations, such as sporting organisations, can offer that. Plenty of voluntary organisations and others do similar things, but they need to involve communication and planning. Particularly for children with additional support needs and autistic children, it is important to have a plan and a focus and for them to know what is going to happen today, tomorrow and next week. The element of trust, which we talked about earlier, is also important. The best results are seen where, as often as possible, the same people work and interact with the young person.
Going back to my youth work roots, I wonder where mentoring went. For me, it was so effective years ago. I am not going to dwell on the past, but I have often wondered what happened to that. A mentor can build a relationship with a young person and be the person who helps, supports and encourages them. We are talking about the whole family support model, and mentoring is a huge part of that.
The purpose of the services that we used to have was to reintegrate young people who were completely out of school. While they were with the service, they were still marked as attending education, because we were building up their social education, their confidence and their skills.
That relates to what I am going to ask about next, which I also asked about last week. In effect, we are talking about role models that families will trust. As you have all been saying, it is about investing in things so that people can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Absolutely. It is easy to say that we should have person-centred approaches, but it is difficult to put them in place. If we are going to do this properly, we need to have person-centred processes that involve everybody who knows the child. That might include a taxi driver or the newsagent they go and speak to every day. Every person who knows the child should be in the room helping and supporting them with their needs and their challenges.
We need to get away fae the idea that it is only about the professionals who sit round a table with their prepared papers in front of them and wait for their turn to speak. It needs to be more person centred and it needs to be about people who know, love and support the child and want the best for them. That is what we need to get back to, and I see mentors as a huge part of that. We have lost that relationship-based support. People often see mentoring and youth work as being about going out and kicking a football about with a kid in a field, although I know that nobody in this room has that belief. It is so powerful when a young person has a consistent point of support and connection with an individual who can make a huge difference. That takes me back to the importance of trust and relationships.
Finally, on ASN, I was struck by Gavin Yates’s comment that 50 per cent of the young people in our classrooms have additional support needs. As I have said to unions and everyone else who has come in, should we be looking not at having additional support needs teachers as such, but at embedding that approach as a main part of teaching? Three of my five grandkids are neurodiverse, and I am sure that I am not the only person in that position. Would such an approach give families more support, and might it help those in the class feel able to deal with it? I know that doing something along those lines would probably require national negotiations to be reopened with the Educational Institute of Scotland, but might that be part of the solution? I know that it was mentioned briefly earlier on.
Yes. Interestingly, in the survey work that we did for our parents charter with our entire membership—that is, 2,500 schools from Shetland to Stranraer and everywhere in between—we found that additional support needs were the number 1 issue that came up. As a colleague mentioned earlier, not providing effective additional support affects not just the young people who have such needs but all the young people, and the adults, in the school. It is absolutely vital that we start treating education as a space where everybody who has a need gets the support that they need. There will always be individuals with really profound disability for whom only a specialist school will work and who will need one-on-one support, but for others, there is an opportunity for us to do much better.
However, the current model of one teacher teaching 28 kids is perhaps not the model for the future, and we might need to look at different, more tailored and smarter approaches. Our parents charter is very much based on that, because that is what mums and dads are telling us.
Given that about 50 per cent of kids in school have additional support for learning needs, why does it not make up 50 per cent of teacher training? Why are 50 per cent of the teaching staff not neurodivergent, too?
Billy, that is the two of us reopening national negotiations with the EIS.
And why not? Teaching unions are really important, but they should not be the prime mover in this. It should be the public; it should be mums, dads and kids—every member of society—who are driving this, rather than professionals, academics or even politicians.
I am sorry, but we are getting really tight for time. Have you wrapped up, George?
Yes.
I will take a brief supplementary from Katherine Sangster, who had indicated that she wanted come in. We will have to keep it very tight, though.
I will be really brief. I do not want to open up another big discussion when we are so short of time, but I did want to thank Gavin Yates for raising the issue of schools having a half-day on a Friday. It was really good to hear.
I have been sitting listening to all the evidence, and we have heard about the school environment, support and subject choice, but we have not actually talked about the timing of the school day, which has not changed since Victorian times. Does anyone want to make a short comment on that? Should we just go away and look at what happens internationally in that respect?
Possibly. As the dad of two 16-year-olds—
I hear you.
—I know that getting their backsides out of bed in the morning is always a challenge, and if any member of the committee would like to assist me with that, I am in Dalgety Bay in Fife.
The timing of the school day is a really interesting issue. Perhaps I am being idealistic, but—and this brings me back to the “Why not?” question—why can we not look at a system in which children learn when they are ready to learn? Everybody has different body clocks. You will know yourself that maybe you are mair alive in the morning or later in the evening, and there are times when you can take stuff in better. So, why not have a system in which you have, say, an education card, you need to be in a certain number of hours a week, and you punch in and out when you want to? It would be a wider system of support. That would be my idealistic view.
The only thing that I would like to say about the school day is how it affects children when they have other things to do. We have not talked about appointments and other services that children have to attend and which can interrupt their school day.
That is a really important issue.
Thank you.
I call Patricia Gibson for a very brief question, and I must ask for very brief answers, too.
12:00
It will be a very short question. It was Gavin Yates, I think, who said that 50 per cent of kids, or thereabouts, have additional support needs, and he also said that we need staff who can deal with that. The only point that I would make in that respect is that demand for support for additional support needs has gone way up, and no workforce planning could have been done to deal with it. Do you think that it has something to do with the aftereffects, or aftershocks, of the Covid lockdown? I just think that we could not have planned for it, because we could not have seen it coming. If you look at the graph, you will see how things went up in a very short period of time. Of course, that does not mean that we should not try to tackle the issue, but we were not prepared for it, because we could not have been.
I understand that view, but is it that demand has increased or is it that identification has improved? Perhaps this is a good comment for me to end on, but at least there is now a realisation that we have in our society neurodiverse young people, and neurodiverse adults, too, and they are perhaps more respected than they were before. I know that the services are not perfect by any means, but that is a good thing.
I will tell you what—when I was at school 40 years ago, those young people were just written off completely. We do need to see progress, but there is so much more that we have to do. As Billy Anderson has said, you are, legally speaking, going to have to get your heads around this quickly. Otherwise, public bodies are going to end up in court, where they will lose.
I have just a quick comment to make. I think that it all comes down to identification. I should also say that our eyes have been closed if we didnae see this coming, because it was happening way before the pandemic. The pandemic was a horrendous time, but for a lot of young people, it was the best time ever, because they got educated properly. That speaks volumes, because it was about a lot of young people getting education in the way that they wanted to receive it, and they felt the benefits of that. When Covid was over, that got taken away.
We have not looked at why we are not implementing that sort of approach now. It was proved during Covid that it could work, so why was it just taken away? Young people now have a different connection with education; they are saying, “Well, I know that I can do this at home, so why is that option not there now?” There is a whole load of stuff in there.
Thank you so much for that. I had some additional questions, but we are running out of time.
I do want to mention a couple of things before we close, though. The evidence today has been really helpful, but when you were talking to George Adam about the finances, two of my own passions came to mind. If we want the getting it right for every child—or GIRFEC—model and the UNCRC to be fit for purpose and ensure that they are serving our children in the way that they should, we should be looking at a human rights budgeting approach and a wellbeing economy. Those ideas seem to be quite abstract for a lot of people, but that kind of preventative spend would allow us to save money and would provide support for our children. Do you agree with those models?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Perfect. Thank you so much for allowing me to get that in.
With that, I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 12:03.
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