Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2024 [Draft]
I thank Ruth Maguire for her intervention. She is quite right. We heard only this morning that distressed behaviour is almost always a communication. We would have a zero-tolerance approach to a Government that keeps cutting things that would support pupils in that environment. If a child needs to move from a classroom but there is nowhere to put them, meaning that support staff have to spend time with them under staircases and in cupboards, and if no class is available for them to learn in or there are no support staff available to support them, how can we possibly provide the environment that young people in Scotland need? I think that Ruth Maguire knows that.
We have to empower teachers to develop and set rules of engagement in their classrooms and, importantly, to enforce them with clear guidance about the consequences, not as a punishment—this speaks to the point that has just been made—but so that pupils know what is expected of them. We need to empower teachers to set boundaries that create the conditions for pupils to learn best, so that they know that we want them to be safe and to succeed in classrooms where nothing distracts from the opportunity to learn.
A zero-tolerance approach also means ensuring that teachers and school staff can report incidents in the knowledge that senior leaders will support them, that they have a right to a debrief and to consider next steps, and, crucially—this is the point that Ruth Maguire made—to pick up on issues that might have caused the behaviour in the first place. That cannot be overstated. All behaviour is a method of communication, and distressed behaviour is a sign that things are not okay.
We will not tolerate a system that is so stretched that the root causes of poor behaviour are never picked up and never addressed. I, too, was taken aback when the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists confirmed in committee that the Government has not engaged with it on that matter. Getting to the bottom of the situation needs proper multi-agency work and a whole-community approach, but the system has crumbled to such an extent that support has faded away. There is now only one educational psychologist to 600 pupils who need one. Child and adolescent mental health services waiting lists are so long that children’s mental health is going unsupported, and only 0.2 per cent of pupils with additional support needs have access to a plan to address them.