Meeting of the Parliament 24 June 2025
In the interests of brevity, I will try to speed up my comments during the rest of the afternoon.
I was pleased to lodge this suite of amendments following stage 2. Amendments 5, 1 and 76, in my name, would improve the bill.
Amendment 5 would require qualifications Scotland to prepare and publish guidance to support those with educational support needs in undertaking examinations. Amendment 5 would introduce the term “educational support needs” into the bill instead of “additional support needs”, because it is important that children, young people and adult learners with support needs for learning are all covered by these and other provisions in the bill.
15:30Amendment 76 would ensure that that newly introduced term covers existing legislation for children and young people, along with other learners with additional support needs for learning. Amendment 76 is a definition of “educational support needs”. It deliberately uses a new term but defines it as having the same meaning as “additional support needs” under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and “support needs” under the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 2005. That is because it might be confusing to start using those terms to mean something broader in this bill when they are already well understood and have a meaning in their respective contexts.
Amendment 1 would therefore reflect the new terminology in existing provisions in relation to section 3, quality assuring the processes that additional establishments have to put in place to support the assessment of qualifications, particularly for those with additional support needs.
I move amendment 1.