Hansard

A commitment to and belief in inclusive education have underpinned the approach to education policy and legislation in the Scottish Parliament since 2000. The Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc Act 2000 was one of the first pieces of legislation to be passed by Parliament, and it features a requirement that education for all children be provided in mainstream schools, except in prescribed exceptional circumstances.

Those provisions commenced in 2002; their importance cannot be overstated. They created an entitlement for children and young people whose parents would previously often have had to fight for the right of their children simply to be educated. The presumption of mainstreaming, as it has become known, firmly closed the door on institutionalisation of pupils who need support, and it recognised the value to society, communities and families of pupils learning in their communities, wherever possible, while allowing those who need specialist support to receive it.

We now have the first generation of young people who have experienced mainstream education as a consequence of the rights that were established under the 2000 act, and we have seen the fruits of the involvement of those young people in our society and in our communities, where they have been able to obtain their education.

In 2004, Parliament went even further and created a truly inclusive approach to education through the groundbreaking Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. That act fundamentally changed how children and young people are supported in schools. It moved away from a model of medical deficit to a legislative framework that focuses on barriers to children’s and young people’s learning. It recognises that children and young people experience barriers for a range of reasons, including disability and health needs, but it also recognises that family circumstances, learning environment and social and emotional factors can play a part in creating barriers—not all of them long term—to a child’s learning effectively in school.

The key point of the legislation is that children and young people have the right to have their needs identified and assessed, and to receive the support that they need, when they need it, in order that they can overcome anything that gets in the way of their learning.

It is worth recalling that both the 2000 act and the 2004 act were put in place by our predecessors in Government. Since coming to power in 2007, the SNP Government has continued to embed in policy and legislation its commitment to inclusive education. We have updated and revised—first in 2009 and again last year—the additional support for learning legislation and associated guidance to ensure that the 2004 act is effectively implemented.

The wider policies that underpin school education in Scotland—curriculum for excellence, getting it right for every child, and our more recent developments in raising attainment for all, the Scottish attainment challenge and our education reforms—all focus on the need to tackle inequality in order to create a fairer Scotland, and to put each and every child’s needs and interests at the heart of the education system.

That demonstrates the difference that Parliament has made through its dialogue about those subjects, and it demonstrates the difference that Parliament can continue to make when it comes together around shared values, and works together to make change happen in a relatively short time. We should not forget the difference that we can and do make to the people of Scotland as a consequence of that concerted all-party action.

At its heart, inclusive education does not just tolerate diversity but, importantly, promotes and celebrates the diversity in our society. It allows all children and young people to develop an understanding and recognition of differences. That contributes to the development of an increasingly inclusive, empathetic and more just society. It also affords children and young people the opportunity to be part of a community, thereby boosting their emotional wellbeing and aiding the development of social skills.

However, inclusive education also needs diversity in provision: a range of educational settings being available is necessary to ensure that children learn in the environment that best meets their needs. In practice, that means having mainstream schools, special schools, units within mainstream schools and flexible placements.

I want to be clear that there will be no change to the legislation on mainstreaming. This Government will commit neither to a system in which all children must learn in mainstream schools nor to a system in which all children with additional support needs must learn in special schools. We will continue to have legislation that maintains the presumption to mainstream education, and which allows children whose needs are best met in specialist provision or through a mix to have that objective fulfilled.

There are a wide range of positive examples of support provision across Scotland. At the opening of the new Carrongrange high school in Grangemouth yesterday, I saw for myself an absolutely fantastic facility that provides special needs education for young people across a range of different circumstances and experiences. What is striking to me about the development there—which has been taken forward through partnership between the Scottish Government and Falkirk Council—is the creation of a learning environment that reflects the needs and requirements of young people with special educational needs, and deploys its services within a world-class education facility that creates tremendous opportunities for those young people. It was also very clear to me that education is being delivered there in the context of there being very strong staff commitment and staff provision to ensure that adequate resources are in place to meet the needs of individual young people.

The settings of education will vary but, fundamentally, the Government operates on the principle that we should deliver mainstream education where we can, although exceptional provision has to be made available within our society as part of that proposition.

We have a clear agenda for education that is focused on creating a world-class education system that delivers excellence and equity for all children and young people. That does not mean that everything has to be the same and has to be experienced in the same way, but that children and young people should have equal opportunities to reach their full potential.

The approach that we are taking is making a difference. We have more children who have been identified as needing, and who are receiving, additional support in schools. Children and young people who need support for any reason in the short or long terms are being recognised and supported in schools across Scotland: we are supporting children and young people who, until a few years ago, would not have received support, including support for the bereaved, for those from armed forces families and for those whose parents are imprisoned. In addition, it is now commonplace for able pupils to be educated alongside pupils who would traditionally have received support for autism, dyslexia or sensory impairment and, of course, pupils with disabilities.

The outcomes for children and young people with additional support needs have been improving and continue to improve. Here are some of the data. Since 2010-11, attendance of pupils with additional support needs has continued to improve in primary, secondary and special schools, with a total percentage improvement of 1.1 per cent. The overall rate of exclusion for all pupils has more than halved since 2006-07 due to the continued focus by schools and education authorities on building on and improving their relationships with the children and young people who are most at risk of exclusion from their learning communities. However, more needs to be done for pupils who have additional support needs, because they continue to experience a higher rate of exclusion from school. That is unacceptable: more needs to be done to reduce the number.

Children and young people with additional support needs are gaining more and better qualifications than ever. In 2014-15, 60.7 per cent of school leavers with additional support needs left school with one qualification or more at Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 5 or better, and 84.6 per cent left school with one qualification or more at SCQF level 4 or better.

That is all leading to positive outcomes. More young people with additional support needs are reaching positive destinations than ever before: 86.9 per cent of pupils with additional support needs have reached a positive destination, of whom 19 per cent went on to higher education, 38.6 per cent went on to further education and 28.6 per cent went on to employment, training or volunteering. Those achievements are testament to the role that is played by the professional teaching workforce and the wide range of practitioners and professionals who provide the support that children need in their learning.

We should not forget the role that is played by parents and families in supporting their children’s learning, and the role that they often need to play in order to ensure that their children’s rights are respected and that they get the education to which they are entitled, in a setting that best meets their needs. We all know of constituents, and some of us know family members and friends, who are those parents.

Although we can and should reflect on all that we have done in the past to create and maintain inclusive education and how that has contributed to a real shift in attitudes and achievement today, we must also acknowledge that more needs to be done. Recent evidence to Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee demonstrates that the right decisions are not being made for all children and young people and that, for some, inclusive education is still but a policy, rather than their everyday experience. We remain committed to mainstreaming as a central pillar of our inclusive approach to education. The Scottish approach to inclusion is already world leading; our legislative and policy commitments are among the most extensive in the world.

However, we must improve the experience of inclusion for all pupils if we are to deliver on the promise of such an ambitious framework. That is why today I am announcing that the Government will consult on draft guidance on the presumption of mainstreaming. The draft guidance aims to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and day-to-day experience, in order to ensure that local authorities have the information and support that they need to guide their decision making in applying the presumption of mainstream education. It also seeks to encourage a child-centred approach to making decisions on placement.

The implementation of the presumption of mainstreaming requires a commitment to inclusive practice, and it requires approaches to be effective, so the guidance throughout clearly links inclusive practice with the presumption. It includes key features of inclusion and guidance on how to improve inclusive practice in schools. The consultation offers an opportunity to shape the guidance before it is finalised. We will listen very carefully, so I encourage all those who have a contribution to make to express their views in the consultation exercise.

In response to the Education and Skills Committee report “How is Additional Support for Learning working in practice?” I acknowledged that the committee wished to act on the evidence that it had heard. I therefore committed to commissioning independent research into the experiences of children, young people, parents, school staff—including support staff—and education authorities and their partners in relation to additional support for learning. I can now announce that the research process will start and will run concurrently with the consultation on the draft guidance. The intention is to conduct the research in early 2018 and to publish a final report by the end of the summer. Its findings will be used to inform policy development and reporting so that we continue to renew and refresh our commitment to inclusive education in the future, as we have done throughout this session of Parliament.

There is also work that we can do now to improve the experience of inclusive education for children and young people. I have already highlighted the crucial role that is played by teachers, support staff and other staff in mainstream primary and secondary schools, and in units and special schools all over Scotland. They are the key to ensuring that children’s and young people’s experience of education—in the classroom and in the whole school—is truly inclusive. They need to know that they have access to resources that support their professional practice and give them confidence to support children’s learning successfully. We therefore intend to work with Education Scotland to develop inclusive education resources to support headteachers, teachers and support staff in their work, which will be available early next year.

An inclusive approach to education also requires that every child and young person be involved in their own education, and have a voice in shaping their experience. They should be provided with the support that they need to reach their learning potential. One of the aims of the draft guidance will be to give children, parents and carers their place in the decision-making process. From January 2018, children from 12 to 15 will be empowered by the extension of their rights in respect of additional support for learning in school education. We will continue to listen to the voices of young people. Our inclusion ambassadors provide a great way for us to do that, and responses from the consultation on the draft guidance and the research will help to shape our future actions further.

I have set out how far we have come since the Parliament’s establishment—from the recent past when children were treated in a way that often separated them from their peers and their communities, to the present day and our understanding of the importance of inclusion not only for the children themselves but for the wider community. I have been and continue to be clear that this Government’s ambition is for all children and young people, including those who experience barriers to their learning, to be able to reach their full potential, and I have restated our commitment to inclusive education.

However, I know that that commitment is shared across the chamber. We should not lose sight of the fact that none of what we have achieved for children and young people with additional support needs has been achieved without our listening to each other and, indeed, learning from each other’s perspectives in the debate. I hope that the next steps that I have set out today will help to take us further in our journey towards delivering inclusive education in practice for all children and young people.

The education of our children and young people is of paramount importance to us all. We all want all children and young people to have equitable access to a good-quality education that meets their needs and helps them to achieve their full potential.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises that mainstreaming has featured at the heart of its commitment to inclusive education since 2000; welcomes that successive administrations have created and strengthened this commitment through the development of legislative and policy frameworks to support the additional needs of children in their learning; acknowledges the need to learn from current practice to support additional needs and, in particular, the experiences of children, young people and parents in order to improve their experience of inclusive education; welcomes therefore the forthcoming research on this and its findings, which will inform future practice, and notes the launch of the consultation on Excellence and Equity for All: Guidance on the Presumption of Mainstreaming, which seeks to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and the practical experience of children, young people and their families, so that pupils have equitable access to a quality education that meets their needs and helps them to achieve their full potential.