Chamber and committees

We have already committed to strengthening the code of practice in this space, and I know that that work has been going on since the 2021 review. However, on Mr Greer’s substantive point, he is asking me to commit today to changing legislation, so I seek to come back to him on that.

There is undoubtedly an opportunity in public sector reform. Audit Scotland and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have made points about that here and have said that parents should not have to fight. That goes to the heart of the issue, because we have built a system that can result in a senior teacher in a school having to pull partners together to co-ordinate the support for a young person. We must put the young person at the centre—that is the GIRFEC ethos—but let us build support around the young person rather than fight over budget lines as often happens now. Public sector reform will give us an opportunity to drive that forward.

We are already beginning cross-portfolio work with health on a number of different areas. Speech and language therapy is a good example, and there are other opportunities to bring health to the table. For example, I would be happy to share details with the committee of how Education Scotland is working with Public Health Scotland and a number of headteachers on a public health approach to attendance. That is really interesting, because health has a huge role to play in tackling some of the challenges.

To that end, I hope that the update that we will publish following the committee’s report will be helpful, but I will speak to officials about that. Given that officials and I engage with the partnership boards more regularly than the committee does, it may be that we can send the committee updates every six months, for example, on the progress of that work.

Absolutely. A key theme in the committee’s evidence has been that the approach cannot simply be about education responding to the challenge; we need a partnership approach from various partners. I have touched on health today, but the member makes a good point about the importance of football clubs and local communities.

In the debate that we had on behaviour in schools a couple of weeks ago, in Conservative parliamentary time, Brian Whittle gave a very good speech to that end. He is passionate about the subject anyway, but the role of sport in responding to some of the challenges post-Covid is fascinating, and that is an opportunity for us to pursue further. I know that Mr Macpherson has a constituency interest in the matter, as he has raised that with me in the chamber previously.

On attendance specifically, I think that, when I was first appointed, I received weekly updates; those are now fortnightly updates. In the first few weeks of my appointment—we have discussed this in the chamber—we touched on the variance in relation to certain groups after the pandemic. We were seeing dips in attendance in year groups that were transitioning during lockdown, whether that was from primary 7 to secondary or during the transition from broad general education to the senior secondary phase. At the time, we were of the view that those young people had had really important periods of their education disrupted and had then found it very hard to re-engage with the system.

Last year, I commissioned Education Scotland to undertake further work on absence. It published national guidance on that in November, which the committee might be aware of, and we then published further data in December that showed that school absence across the board was at record low levels. It is important for the committee to understand that.

The new measure that we have introduced is about persistent absence—10 per cent absence in a school year of, I think, 190 days, so let us say 20 days a year of missed education. That is a big chunk of your education to lose.

With regard to engagement with other portfolios, I have not specifically engaged with other portfolios on attendance, but I have engaged with them on behaviour and on a number of other educational issues, and I will engage with my colleagues on the issue of absence, because, of course, it is not just about school.

I take the member’s point. I suppose that he is asking whether the presumption of mainstreaming is the right approach.

Good morning. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the committee’s post-legislative inquiry on the 2004 act.

We are now 20 years on from the introduction of that additional support for learning legislation, and our education offer in Scotland looks, in many ways, radically different from that which existed back in 2004. However, for many young people and their families, things have not progressed in the way, or at the pace, that they should have progressed.

I am acutely aware of what that means for the experiences of young people and their families’ experiences in Scotland’s schools, particularly given the substantive increase in learners with additional support needs in recent years. Those young people are not an add-on; they are part of the inclusive nature of Scotland’s education system, so we need a whole-systems approach to better ensure that inclusivity is experienced by all.

The review of additional support for learning, published by Angela Morgan in 2020, focused primarily on the implementation of the 2004 act, concluding that there was no fundamental deficit in the principle and policy intention of the ASL legislation or the substantial accompanying guidance. The challenge lies in translating that intention into practice.

As members will know, the Scottish Government, in partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, responded to the Morgan review, accepting all of the recommendations. We set out a clear action plan, detailing 76 actions to be taken at national and local levels to address the challenges raised and to support the necessary shift in culture, leadership and values across our education system. We are currently halfway through the delivery of that plan, with 39 of the 76 actions marked as having been delivered. As my officials have indicated in writing to the committee, the next detailed progress report is due to be published in the coming weeks, and I look forward to engaging with members and Parliament on the progress.

The ASL project board is focused on reducing the fragmentation of ASL policy. Work has been undertaken to map how ASL policy links to wider education, health and social care policies to ensure that we work across boundaries to deliver better support. We are also undertaking a review of the external information that is shared on ASL policy across a range of platforms, in order to refresh content and provide enhanced and consistent information across the system.

Progress towards an inclusive leadership approach for ASL policy is under way, and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland is incorporating that initiative into its collaborative improvement programme. Moreover, Education Scotland has launched its inclusion, wellbeing and equalities professional learning framework, with direct input from the teaching profession. Our working group has also developed a professional learning framework for support staff, which includes a range of learning and development resources. Finally, given that children and young people, parents and carers and the wider profession are all critical to the delivery of the improvement that we need to make, we are continuing to work in partnership with the young ambassadors for inclusion, the ASL Network and parents’ and carers’ representatives across our stakeholder groups.

I acknowledge the many and varied achievements of our pupils with additional support needs. It is worth noting that the attainment gap between mainstream and special school pupils with ASN and those with no ASN achieving one or more national 5 equivalent qualifications by the time that they leave school has reduced by more than half. It is important to recognise that success and to be mindful of the wider educational landscape—which I know the committee is. Future education reform will affect all learners with additional support needs, just as it affects those who do not have an additional support need. Undoubtedly, as the committee has heard, the pandemic has impacted the pace of improvement, as it has many other aspects of young people’s lives.

Before I conclude, I will touch briefly on the statistics that the Government published yesterday, which included troubling new evidence in relation to attendance. Absence is one of the range of post-pandemic challenges that our schools face, but the data that was published yesterday reinforces a renewed need for a drive across central Government and local government to ensure improved outcomes for all our young people. We will continue to work in partnership to deliver the recommendations of the additional support for learning action plan by March 2026, but, fundamentally, as Angela Morgan stated in her review, we cannot continue to view additional support for learning as a minority area or in a separate silo within the framework of Scottish education. It is in that spirit that I look forward to any suggestions and questions that committee members might have today.

It has to be addressed in partnership, which is why, much like our work on behaviour, the additional support for learning action plan has been a joint endeavour between the Scottish Government and COSLA.

I should say that the Scottish advisory group on relationships and behaviour in schools—SAGRABIS—will be meeting tomorrow to talk about the issues associated with attendance. The committee might want to consider the issue in detail, because attendance rates differ between different parts of the country. It is important to understand that local variation, which is why COSLA has a role to play here.

As cabinet secretary, I accept that Government has to play a leadership role, but I think that that kind of partnership working in relation to the ASL action plan is well understood. If the committee has different views on the matter, I am happy to listen to what they might be.

There are undoubtedly challenges. Mr Rennie touches on the issue of behaviour, and the committee will know that there are strong links between additional support needs and behavioural challenges. We must be mindful of that, but we must also be mindful of the fact that children with an additional support need are far more likely to be excluded. Therefore, if we are meant to have an inclusive education system, there is a challenge in that respect.

More broadly, the challenge in schools is well documented. Mr Rennie has cited evidence from a teacher, and I am sure that we all know teachers—I certainly do—who would echo some of that challenge. However, supporting children with additional support needs is a fundamental responsibility for every teacher in Scotland, and they should be trained and supported to respond to those young people.

There is a challenge at the current time. The additional support needs measure can sometimes be quite monolithic. Once you delve into it, you find a range of different needs sitting behind the 37 per cent of our young people who currently have an additional support need. As a measure, therefore, it can cover things that lie underneath—things that, say, might be at a low level in terms of the additional support that is needed. We should be mindful of that, too.

The other thing to be mindful of is that some schools—in fact, many schools—are supporting children with additional support needs very well. Last week, ahead of today’s committee appearance, I was thinking about Craigie high school in Dundee, which I have visited and which is doing some fantastic work with its pupil equity funding to support children with additional support needs. The sort of holistic, inclusive approach that that secondary school has adopted is really changing outcomes for those young people. Therefore, I accept the challenge, but I know, too, that some schools are responding to that challenge differently.

Perhaps—this is where I question the role that bodies such as Education Scotland will play in the future—there is a role to be played in not just exemplifying good practice but sharing it across the board. Where there is challenge, there are opportunities. In addition to pupil equity funding, we have examples of Scottish attainment challenge funding being used to provide the additionality that is needed in schools.

Broadly speaking, there is a challenge here that I do not shy away from, but the alternative is to move away from the presumption of mainstreaming. From all that I have seen of the evidence that the committee has taken, I do not think that anyone around the table this morning would be in favour of that.

I think that the committee has taken evidence on that, with the focus on school culture. I think that that is part of it—it is about how you can support that holistic school culture.

It brings us back to Michelle Thomson’s question. Right now, schools are dealing with lots of different things. They have to raise attainment, look at our programme for international student assessment statistics—indeed, committee members were putting questions about that to me before Christmas—and respond to attendance issues, because we have real challenges with persistent non-attendance, which is an issue that I would like to come back to at some point. The fact is that we also need to support our children and young people, and, historically, we have not been very good at doing that.

When I was at school—that is not so long ago, although I will be 40 this year—many children with additional support needs were removed from the classes that I sat in because they were seen as a problem and a challenge, and they were put elsewhere. I worry that the current public debate is moving us back into that space. That is not where we want to go. Teachers want support, and they need wraparound provision.

Part of that support is the investment that we have put into pupil support assistants. I am pleased that that investment has been held at its current level this year and that we have increased the number of pupil support assistants. I realise, though, that Mr Rennie might have a follow-up question on that in relation to staff specialisms, which I am also mindful of.

We have a strong and inclusive education system in Scotland. Indeed, it was one of the strengths that came out of the national discussion that was published last year, and we should celebrate it, but I do not deny the tension that exists at the current time. We all need to reflect on the fact that part of the issue is that we are post-pandemic and that the same malaise across the system, whether in relation to attendance, attainment or additional support needs, is being felt in a number of other jurisdictions. The Welsh are struggling with similar challenges, and the situation down south is very similar.