Chamber and committees

I echo other members’ thanks to the clerks, committee members and those who gave evidence to the inquiry.

As most members will be aware, and as the committee’s report highlights, in the past decade alone, the number of pupils across Scotland with a recognised additional support need has doubled. As we have developed a better understanding of additional support needs, the number of pupils in Scotland who are identified as being in need of extra support has increased dramatically. However, those numbers do not include pupils who might have an additional support need that has not yet been recognised, for one reason or another, and who have slipped through the cracks of a system that is designed to support them.

The number of pupils with a recognised additional support need jumps wildly from year to year, not only because of our greater understanding of those additional needs but because of the disparity in reporting between local authorities.

Although, as members will be aware, I do not sit on the Education, Children and Young People Committee—I am impersonating Ross Greer today—I noted with great interest the contents of the report and the submissions to the committee. I will come on to many of them in due course, but one in particular relates to my previous point. The issue of when support can be put in place for a young person was highlighted in the report. It claims that some local authorities are waiting for a formal ASN diagnosis before putting the necessary support in place and that, in other areas, although that is not required, that fact is not communicated effectively to parents, which has a knock-on impact on the accuracy of reporting.

As we have heard, the only available support that is set out in law is co-ordinated support plans, but only 0.5 per cent of young people with a recognised ASN currently have one and the gap is continually widening. More and more frequently, we hear testimony—through the committee’s inquiry and beyond—that councils do not fully understand what is required of them when it comes to co-ordinated support plans and that young people and parents have gone through experiences that have been nothing short of traumatic because of the lack of a CSP.

Co-ordinated support plans should play a critical role in enabling children to access the support required to have their rights fulfilled, but the criteria for them is too narrow for them to be effective. The current criteria, which are outlined in the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, lead to an outdated and restrictive view of the provision of CSPs by local authorities. Removing the current criteria from primary legislation would provide greater flexibility and adaptability in ensuring that CSPs work for individuals.

Absolutely. Mr Whitfield is far more of an expert in that area than I am, and he makes his point well.

A major barrier to young people accessing co-ordinated support plans is the requirement for a young person to need at least 12 months of intense support from multiple services. When everyone agrees that a young person needs a co-ordinated support plan, they might not be able to get one because that specific box cannot be ticked.

An option for changing the requirements for obtaining a co-ordinated support plan could sit with the proposed learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill. I know that the bill would not be within the direct remit of education ministers, but I would welcome confirmation from the Government of whether it considers that an amendment of that nature would be within scope. It is disappointing that the bill is not included in the latest programme for government, but I welcome the reassurances from the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport and the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise that work on the bill’s provisions is under way, and I hope that the bill will be published as soon as possible.

My Scottish Green colleagues and I stand firm in our belief that education must be inclusive, with every young person able to thrive. However, the committee’s report highlights that, although Scotland’s education system is largely well intentioned, it is failing to deliver the inclusive vision that it set out to achieve. The failure is particularly evident when we consider the lack of adequate resources and support staff. Teachers and support workers are often overwhelmed by the growing demands in classrooms, and the committee heard from witnesses who described the increasing complexity of pupils’ needs, but the level of specialist support—whether from speech and language therapists, from educational psychologists or from mental health services—is simply not keeping pace.

With the right resources, the vast majority of pupils with additional support needs can and should be supported in mainstream schools, although for young people with very high levels of additional needs, education providers for those with complex needs will continue to provide the most appropriate education environment. However, as witness after witness said in their evidence, the implementation of mainstreaming has been problematic and has not been properly resourced. As the committee’s report highlights, children with more complex needs are increasingly being placed in mainstream settings without appropriate support. That is setting them up to fail, and it is putting immense pressure on teachers, who are not equipped to manage pupils with diverse and complex needs without the right training and resources.

I am sure that there will be a lot of talk in this debate about the lack of resources. I recognise that it would be inappropriate of me to demand more and more from the Government while the cabinet secretary’s budget is becoming tighter and tighter. However, although I recognise the challenges of funding such a system, there must be greater scrutiny of how current spending priorities across the Government might be rebalanced to better support young people. The Government continues to pursue a wide array of wasteful spending. In education, one saving—albeit a small one—could be made by ending national standardised assessments. In other areas, shooting estates get about £4 million-worth of tax breaks, and there are other tax breaks for large, highly profitable organisations. That would be a good place from which to start reallocating money.

The education portfolio bears a disproportionate burden of in-year budget balancing exercises because, unlike many other portfolios, it has areas of spending that can be reallocated each year. The collective effect of that in the past few years has been disproportionate and has had an impact not only on tackling rising issues with behaviour in schools and the universal provision of school meals, but on the support that can be offered to the ever-rising number of young people in Scotland with additional support needs.

One of the more striking concerns that was raised during the committee’s inquiry is the challenge that is faced by parents when they try to navigate the complex and often opaque systems that are designed to support young people.

In my opening speech, I spoke about the role that co-ordinated support plans should play. Scotland’s education system is not one in which parents and young people should have to fight to get information about their rights, not least when they are in a country that has enshrined the UNCRC in law.

At present, many local authorities make it difficult for parents to engage with support services. One easy remedy would be to place an obligation on councils to proactively inform parents about their rights and to clearly signpost next steps in relation to needs assessments, transition plans and support plans. Simple steps, such as timely communication on the available options, would empower parents, reduce stress and ensure early intervention where it is needed most.

However, in some circumstances, that would not be enough. I am supporting families in North Lanarkshire who are having a hard time getting transport to get their children with an additional support need to school, as a result of a cut in bus entitlement. For some families, not being able to get their child to school is a barrier to the child’s education as a whole. The decision for that cut clearly did not factor in children who have an additional support need but who are in mainstream school. Many of them could tolerate the school bus and were relatively safe in that relatively controlled environment, but the service bus is not appropriate for them. As far as we can find, there was no outreach to those young people or their parents about the impact on them. That example shows, however, that improving communication alone is not a cure-all. Even with the best of intentions, informing parents and young people of their rights does little good if the support services or schools that they are in are overwhelmed.

Despite a recurring £145 million intervention that the Scottish Greens delivered during our time in Government, many local authorities failed to use that cash for the desired purpose of transferring temporary teacher contracts to permanent ones. That has, sadly, resulted in the number of teachers in Scotland falling, and, unfortunately, all indicators point towards teacher numbers continuing to fall. Having fewer teachers, particularly those who specialise in additional support needs, while the number of pupils continues to rise, is a recipe for burn-out and an overwhelmed system.

I was proud that two particular Government commitments, which focus on increased staff levels for those with additional support needs, were introduced through the Bute house agreement.

The first commitment was to develop a programme of accreditation and registration for additional support needs assistants.

The second commitment was to work with the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers to ensure appropriate career progression and pathways for teachers who are looking to specialise in additional support for learning.

Although it was delayed, progress on the first of those two commitments seemed to be progressing positively. However, since the Greens left the room, we have heard nothing about it from the Government.

The second commitment, which was also in the additional support for learning action plan, seems to have stalled as well.

The most recent update to the ASL action plan was published in November 2022 and, despite an initial Government commitment to review the plan this spring, I am glad to hear confirmation that a further update is due soon. I would be particularly keen, as would my colleague, Ross Greer, to hear from the cabinet secretary, either in her closing speech or in writing, with an update on both commitments. We would also be happy to contribute to the upcoming refresh of the ASL action plan.

We recognise the scale of the challenge that the Government faces, but that cannot be met with inaction. It is clear that targeted investment in teacher training and career progression, as well as the expansion of multi-agency support in schools, is crucial to tackling the problems in implementing mainstreaming and access to support.

In the spirit of collegiality, we remain committed to the delivery of those promises, and we are happy to work with the Government on delivering them.

One area in which I am glad that we are making progress—and that will have a positive knock-on effect—is the provision of mental health support services in schools, which guarantees access in school to mental health and wellbeing support. We are far from being in a position where every child has equal access to those services, but the past three six-monthly reports have shown a steady increase in the number of children and young people who access those expanded services. However, the most recent period on which the Government published a report came at the end of 2022, and no further Government reports have been forthcoming. Again, we would be interested in any updated reporting on that.

I was interested in Jeremy Balfour’s comments about anything other than mainstreaming for a young person being seen as a failure.

One thing that I do not often hear being discussed is how we ensure that the young person finds the best place for them. We have spoken about various plans, reviews and support plans, and I am amazed that parents know where to start.

Setting aside the current issues with resource, to address the culture, we need to offer both mainstream and additional support settings as equal options. As Jeremy Balfour noted, we also need to be able to move between them, depending on a change in the child’s or young person’s needs. It is also crucial that the support follows the young person.

It is important that we do not see those issues as individual, with specific and tailored responses to each one. The solution to properly addressing additional support needs and wider issues is to view all of them holistically.

If we are serious about ensuring a fairer education for all, we must ask ourselves how we can reconcile our commitment to inclusion and support for ASN pupils with the fact that classrooms are increasingly crowded and teachers are overwhelmed. I hope that the Education, Children and Young People Committee’s report will be a significant stepping stone to achieving that vision.

Good morning. With the previous witnesses, we had a discussion about the good things in the bill that could be separated from other things to allow us to take a longer time to look at the more structural reforms. Anne’s law is one of those things, and there is a lot of focus on people who access services and carers, relating to advocacy, short breaks and so on. Are there other things in the “good stuff” category that the witnesses want to progress? Many people have said that they could be progressed without the bill.

Frank Reilly is nodding the most, so I will come to him first.

Good morning. The theme of my questions is everything else that we have not already spoken about, so I apologise if it turns into a random run around the bill.

So far, we have had a chat about the unions now having withdrawn their support for the bill. Some of them are looking for the bill to be withdrawn, although other organisations are still in the works to try to make it better.

There are obviously some good things in the bill in relation to those receiving care, such as Anne’s law, the right to short breaks and advocacy provisions. Do the witnesses believe that we are at the stage at which we need to go back to the drawing board on some of the reorganisation and some of the provisions around fair work, but that we also need to make progress on the good things so that we do not lose any more of the good will that is left around the co-design that has already happened? I absolutely appreciate what people have said so far about the workforce’s input into co-design and how the workforce is feeling. On the other side of that, there are people who receive care and their families who have put their time in and have seen something come from that. Do the witnesses support a position in which we progress the good things where we can and have a wider conversation around what whole-scale reform looks like in more detail?

We have had conversations with Alison Bavidge previously about how heavily legislated for social work is. Are we getting to the stage where we have reinvented the wheel for social work so many times that it is no longer a wheel? Do we need to look at how much legislation on governance there is and get it an awful lot tighter so that the job and the work can be done on the ground?

We also have a patchy picture across the country in relation to which services, including children’s services and justice social work services, the local authority delivers or does not deliver. There are concerns from stakeholders—I am sure that some of you share the concerns—about how it works in practice for those who do not currently have all the services being delivered by the local authority. Do you have views on how we square that circle, for a start, and on whether children’s and justice services should be included in the bill?

This question is for Colin Poolman and Katie MacGregor, whose organisations are still working to make the bill better. What amendments would you like to see being made to the bill? Obviously, on the union side of things, people are absolutely on board with good stuff such as collective bargaining, but are there things on the workforce side that your workforces are looking for?

That is interesting, thanks.

That is useful, thank you. The inconsistent nature of integration across the country of children’s and justice services, as well as the geographical spread, has also been raised.

Pauline Lunn mentioned the different model in Highland earlier. Given what is in the bill, the potential for children’s and justice services to come in and the issue with the lead agency in Highland, how confident are you that the current provisions will deliver what they need to? What else do we need in the bill? Do we need more detail? Do we need to go back and take longer?

Many organisations, including yours, I am sure, have involved themselves in co-design processes, and I am keen that we do not burn all that good will and good engagement. How do we get to a point where people have confidence that the bill will deliver the change that has been needed for the past decade and a half?