Hansard

On this occasion, I would have been quite happy to give Bob Doris my six minutes because he is making the same points that I hear about in my constituency mailbag, and they are problems that most members see across all our local authorities in Scotland.

Today, we are all united by a common goal of meeting the educational needs of every child in Scotland as best we can, regardless of their ability or whatever additional support they might need. The intention behind the presumption of mainstreaming is a noble one, which is meant to establish inclusivity as a default.

However, inclusivity is far greater than just physically including children with additional support needs in a mainstream classroom setting. Perhaps it is because I am not of an age where I can remember things being all that much different from how they are now, but I look at this area and I see constituents at my surgeries, week in and week out, and I hear about the battles that their families are facing. I do not look at the situation as it is now as being entirely positive.

It is not a political point to say that we must remember that this is a huge challenge, because it is a huge challenge around the world and no one has all the answers. It is difficult to work out exactly what is best when we are balancing up some of the different considerations. We must not forget that many children do not know what mainstream education is. In the parts of my constituency that are covered by the Dumfries and Galloway Council area, I see young people being farmed out across Scotland because adequate resources are not in place that would allow them to go to mainstream or even special schools in the region. Those young people are being separated from their peers and their communities. I do not have all the answers or know what to say, but I see the struggles that their families face and the social and economic cost of that for everyone in our society.

When I reflected on my feelings after reading Enable Scotland’s “#IncludED in the Main?!” report, I was sad and surprised to find that I was not shocked. It is very frustrating to be sitting in this Parliament in 2017 reading the report and to have to accept that all that information is out there and that so many teachers, parents and pupils are facing those experiences, yet we have not found the answers. It shows that there is still a long road ahead to ensure full inclusivity for children with additional support needs and that they can benefit from mainstreaming.

The report found that more than half of the education staff who were surveyed felt that children with learning disabilities were not involved in as many extracurricular activities, trips and opportunities outside the classroom as their peers. It said that two thirds of children with additional support needs were still being bullied in mainstream schools. Additionally, it said that children with additional support needs might not be officially excluded from their classrooms, but informal exclusion was very common, and that parents felt unable to work due to the fear that they would be asked to collect their children during the working day.

In my time as an MSP, one of the saddest things that I have come across was a family in Annan who told me at a support group that the best day of their child’s education was when they were formally excluded from school, because that was the very first time that the local authority took seriously their request for additional support. It was the first time that the family felt listened to by education professionals. I do not think that that was through any malice; it was through a lack of resource and individuals in the education department at the council being overworked. Further, it was through the pressures that teachers were facing in school that they did not find the time to give that child the attention that was needed.

A situation such as that adds so much stress for families and is very unpleasant for them. They have to fight the system every step of the way for their children’s right to a basic level of education. If we do not do something about that, it will only compound the problems that are caused by the attainment gap in the long run, as all children in mainstream schools suffer when support is not there for those who need it the most.

On a more positive note, I welcome the reference that was made to combining special schools with mainstream schools on a single site. In my Dumfriesshire constituency, I am pleased that that is happening with Langlands primary school, which is getting a new building as part of the new learning campus in the town, as that will make a difference to the pupils. I recognise that progress has been made, but there is far more to be done.

We are very lucky that Enable Scotland has done that great piece of work, and I pay a brief tribute to the Annan and Kirkconnel ACE—active community of empowered people—groups in my constituency, who made such an effort to bring it to my attention.

I hope that we are all ready to read the findings of the survey that the Government has proposed, because I think that they will be truly shocking and disappointing, and that they will demand that we redouble our efforts on a cross-party basis to ensure that we get things right for every child in Scotland.