Hansard

I am glad to uphold that precedent with your permission, Presiding Officer. I would not otherwise have dared to say that I am glad to see pupils from Belmont Academy, which is in my constituency. I congratulate them on their work in producing the "Belmont Banner", the school's newspaper, of which I have many copies. All members are welcome to see me later and take one.

The debate is important, so I will take time to outline why we have introduced the bill. As many members know, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 will apply from September to all areas of education. The Executive has introduced the bill to complement the DDA and to extend to Scotland duties that are similar to those that the DDA will apply to local education authorities in England and Wales. The bill will also secure parents' independent right to access their children's school records. We need to ensure that every child in Scotland can make the most of educational opportunities, realise his or her full potential and build on his or her talents and skills.

The DDA will make it unlawful throughout Britain for education providers to discriminate against pupils on the ground of disability. I am sure that everyone agrees that that change is welcome. It will mean that schools and education authorities must ensure that disabled pupils are not placed at a substantial disadvantage in relation to other pupils. Schools will need to consider how they can make reasonable adjustments to ensure that pupils can access education and associated services. At the same time as we maintain a focus on individual needs, we can make changes that will benefit many pupils who have disabilities. That is why we need the bill.

By requiring local authorities and independent and grant-aided schools to prepare accessibility strategies, we will encourage them to focus on long-term strategic planning for improvements, to identify priorities in their areas and to promote inclusion. Their accessibility strategies will be intended, over time, to increase for pupils who have disabilities access to the curriculum, the school environment and school information. They will consider the need for changes in all schools, nursery schools and other pre-school education that local authorities provide directly.

The aim is not to start something new or to make changes overnight. Accessibility strategies will ensure that responsible bodies can build on and develop the planning that is in place for educating pupils who have disabilities. For instance, in their improvement plans under the national priorities and in their children's services plans, local authorities are planning for pupils who have disabilities.

The bill complements and supports other legislation and policies for children who have special educational needs. Such children do not necessarily have physical disabilities, but there is a large overlap between the groups. The inclusion programme, through the excellence fund, has provided significant funding to promote inclusion of children who have special educational needs. About 75 per cent of that funding also benefits children who have disabilities.

We want to ensure equality of opportunity for all pupils, especially those who have special educational needs and disabilities. That is a key part of the national priorities. We expect that local authorities' accessibility strategies will form part of their improvement plans. That will ensure that the Executive receives copies of strategies and can monitor how authorities are progressing. It also means that that is not a requirement for yet another plan. Responsible bodies can dovetail their accessibility strategies with the planning they already do, which will avoid duplication.

Many independent schools have experience of including pupils who have disabilities and see that as part of their regular business-planning cycles. We are not asking people to make sudden changes. The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 does not expect schools to be able to support children who have the most complex needs. The Executive is clear that, in terms of mainstreaming and as far as it is possible to undertake it, we want to promote the inclusion in mainstream schools of pupils who have disabilities and other additional support needs.

However, we acknowledge that there are still many children who have complex needs, but in whose best interests it might not be to place them in a mainstream school. Those children will continue to be educated in special schools, which can offer them the high level of support that they need. In determining where a child should be placed, the views of the parents and the child should be taken into account to a large extent.

However, I believe that the great majority of children who have disabilities should be able to benefit from education in a mainstream school—in the local authority or the private sector, as is available at present—if they wish to do so. They should, wherever possible, be able to follow the same curriculum as their peers. They should be able to access the whole school and all its activities. They should also be able to learn using information that is provided for them in a format that is suitable for their needs.

We also acknowledge that supporting children who have an increasingly wide range of needs is a challenge for schools. That is why planning is so important. For inclusion to be successful, we must plan to remove from schools and nursery schools throughout Scotland the barriers to participation. Some of those barriers might be physical, but some are attitudinal.

Much good practice exists. Many schools are already successful in promoting inclusion. The Executive continues to encourage that by providing finance for staff training through the special educational needs specific grant and through other funding to support inclusion. We want accessibility strategies to enable local authorities and schools to identify what further improvements are needed and to plan to carry out those improvements.

Of course local authorities and schools will continue to have flexibility in developing their own approaches. They all start from different base points and all have different pupil populations and challenges to face. That means that their priorities will be different. It is not appropriate for the bill to prescribe exactly what must be done and when. The responsible bodies should work that out through consultation. They should consult closely those who might be affected by the strategy and those who have relevant expertise, including colleagues, school staff, pupils, parents, health professionals, social workers, voluntary organisations and others.

Accessibility is an area that is constantly developing and changing. It might be hard for some of us to imagine a time when every school in Scotland will be completely accessible to all pupils. Much as we would like that to be the case, there will always be room for improvement. Nonetheless, we hope that the bill will stimulate continual improvements over time.

It might take many years for all schools to become fully accessible to pupils who have physical disabilities, but other changes can be expected to happen more quickly. Although significant resources will be made available to local authorities in grant-aided expenditure and in ring-fenced funds such as the inclusion programme, we recognise that that will not be enough to do everything that local authorities would like to do in the first three-year period.

However, in consulting on and developing strategies, responsible bodies will find that there are many changes that they can make quickly. Some of those might be in the delivery of on-going programmes. For example, some local authorities have strategies for rolling out training to school staff on issues such as supporting children who have autistic spectrum disorders. Some might be working with other agencies to promote awareness about disability and diversity to school pupils. Others might have negotiated contracts with specialist providers to allow information to be made available to pupils in a range of alternative formats. Clearly, such initiatives can benefit a wide range of people, not just school pupils and staff. I stress again that the bill is not just about buildings and physical access, but about providing a range of resources.

Some MSPs have expressed concerns about how we will ensure that the bill is effective and about how it will be publicised and monitored. In addition to consulting widely, responsible bodies will be encouraged to be proactive in promoting their strategies once they are in place. They might wish to provide a summary to interested parties, such as school staff, parents and pupils, or they might ask head teachers to make parents, staff and pupils aware of how the strategy will lead to improvements in their school.

Responsible bodies will also have to make copies of their strategy available to anyone who requests it. Many members will be pleased to hear that my colleague Nicol Stephen proposes to lodge an amendment at stage 2 to make it clear that strategies must also be made available in alternative formats if people request them.

Although I do not have much more time, I want to comment briefly on the monitoring role. I assure the Parliament that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education and the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care will be involved in that process. Furthermore, the Executive will ensure that it receives copies of accessibility strategies to find out whether progress is being made and to identify areas that need further improvements.

Finally, we must not forget that the bill has another important purpose. Until March 2000, parents in Scotland had an independent right to access their children's school records. However, that right was unintentionally removed when the Data Protection Act 1998 came into force in March 2000.

We want to take the opportunity in the second part of the bill to create the necessary powers that will enable us to reinstate that right. In doing so, we want to ensure that, where appropriate, children's rights to confidentiality will be protected. In general, parents should be able to access information about their children that is held by schools and education authorities.

As a result, I am fully committed to the bill and the provision that it will make in two separate areas of access in education. I welcome today's debate and am sure that the Parliament will vote to accept the bill's general principles.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the Education (Disability Strategies and Pupils' Records) (Scotland) Bill.