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Justice Committee 11 December 2012

11 Dec 2012 · S4 · Justice Committee

Item of business

School Exclusions and Offending

Jim Thewliss Watch on SPTV

In my previous life I was a geography teacher and I am married to a history teacher, so I am used to challenging and difficult questions from history teachers.To take the discussion forward a wee bit, I am entirely with John Butcher and Alan Staff on the way in which schools are starting to adapt and develop an inclusive culture. One or two challenges exist within that, and there is no silver bullet to solve them. It is useful and encouraging to see the representation around this table of those people who can, should and do have input into ensuring that we develop a culture of inclusion within schools.Again, as has been alluded to, there are different challenges for the various sectors in school education. Certainly, in my city, we now have youngsters coming into nursery school who present the most horrendous challenges to those who want to include them in education. Apex works in secondary schools to keep young people in the school and in education—it is my role in life to educate every child who comes through the door—but will we in the secondary sector solve the problem that is fed through from primary school? No, we will not, because there is a great deal of learned behaviour by the time the young person comes into the secondary school. Within the primary school, the same thing holds.It is useful to note that the focus in recent months has swung around very much to looking at early intervention. Harry Burns has done work in that regard. If through early intervention we pick up on a child, even pre-nursery, and start to give them messages that are different from the messages that they get at home from the person who is supposed to love and nurture them, are we confusing that child? Is that the best way of doing things? Without wanting to undermine any of the good work that could, should and will be done at that level, I point out that we put young people back into challenging and difficult environments as soon as we put them out of school, which exacerbates the mixed message that they get.Can we start looking a wee bit more imaginatively at the secondary school curriculum? I can identify, as can my primary colleagues, the young people in primary and secondary school who will be the challenging youngsters and the multiple offenders and excludees. Can we start using organisations such as Apex to intervene in their education at a much earlier stage and look at the curriculum that we offer them? Can we start to look at the development of parenting skills, for example?We are at a critical point in education just now in relation to curriculum for excellence, which gives us a huge opportunity. I would not for a minute suggest that curriculum for excellence is going to solve everyone’s problems in every context, but there is a huge opportunity in what we are doing just now to look at skills for learning and for life, particularly in relation to the way in which we develop young people’s parenting skills in the context of a deficit model, which we are now picking up as early as pre-school.

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Justice Committee 11 December 2012

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