Hansard

I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate, as the presumption of mainstreaming has been a topic that has come up a fair number of times with my constituents, particularly in relation to children who are on the autism spectrum. I have had quite a number of cases in which parents and nursery schools have felt that mainstream primary 1 would not work for a child, but Glasgow City Council insisted on mainstreaming. Bob Doris talked about that issue.

The draft guidance is, broadly, good. It weighs up various factors that have been raised with me. For example, paragraph 4 lists the four key features of inclusion, which are that the child is present, participating, achieving and supported.

When I was younger, many young people with additional needs were hidden away in places such as Lennox Castle hospital near Glasgow, and some of the rest of us used to visit them once in a while. The fact that we now have a more mixed cohort in mainstream schools is a major improvement, but sometimes we have to ask—as members have asked this afternoon—how well some kids are participating.

There is certainly concern among some parents that their children are not getting the individual support that they need in a mainstream school, perhaps because of lack of staff. However, I accept that some parents can be overly protective of their kids. Paragraph 48 of the draft guidance makes the point that we need to retain high expectations for all our children and young people, which will sometimes mean pushing them out of their comfort zones. The example that is given in the guidance is Cardinal Winning secondary school in my constituency, of which I and the community think very highly.

The process of taking kids out of their comfort zones can be expensive in terms of staff time and, therefore, money. I saw a good example of that a few years ago, when I visited Falkland House school in Fife, which Liz Smith spoke about. It focuses on boys with autism. One thing that it did was to have youngsters apply for a real job cutting grass around the school. Of course, some of them did not get a job and, being autistic, they were, to be frank, distraught. However, it was a learning experience for those young people to enable them to handle setbacks in the future. Not many schools could have done such an exercise, because it was so resource intensive.

It is also apparently the case at Falkland that virtually all the boys were from families with well-educated and better-off parents who had pushed and pushed for that provision. Jeremy Balfour spoke about such parents. Only one child from Glasgow was at the school, but I do not believe that only one child in Glasgow needed that provision. I have had the same experience with friends of mine: parents who have been more able to challenge their council have achieved better outcomes for their children.

The draft guidance is open about that issue, which is good. The example at paragraph 59 is New Stevenston primary, where apparently

“Some parents feel they ‘had to fight’ to get a placement”.

If I have a question for the cabinet secretary, it is the one that Jeremy Balfour asked. How do we ensure that youngsters whose parents are less able—or less combative—get the most suitable provision for them?

If any of that sounds a bit critical of local authorities, especially Glasgow City Council, I also want to say how much good I have seen in the Glasgow system. One of the big advantages of having schools that are run by the council is that expertise and support on specialist issues can be shared across them, and in Glasgow the system is of the scale to provide special schools and support to mainstream schools.

To change tack, I will mention the Islands (Scotland) Bill, which might seem to be a little bit off the immediate subject for debate. I am a member of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, which has been doing a fairly thorough job on the bill, having visited a number of islands. One of the proposals in the bill is for an islands impact assessment to ensure that the impact of any policy or guidance, such as that which we are discussing, on island communities is considered. When I looked at the draft guidance to see whether it includes an islands perspective, I was interested to see the suggestion in paragraph 21 that pupils might attend two separate schools. That might be fairly easy in a city, but would certainly be much more challenging on an island.

That said, I thought that paragraph 26 was extremely good in its acceptance that

“Local circumstances can be very different”

and that the draft guidance itself does not overprescribe. That is the kind of flexibility that people on the islands are looking for. We will, no doubt, hear from them if it is not.

I was glad to see in the Conservative and Labour amendments recognition that the number of children with additional support needs is increasing, and that it would be a challenge to cope with that situation at any time, and especially when finances are tight. I am very open to some tax increases, assuming that we get more money from them and that such moves do not lead to widespread tax avoidance. However, even with increased revenue through taxation, resources will be tight, and we will not be able to do all that we want to do. I hope, therefore, that it will be recognised across the chamber that we all need to prioritise and that no one will get everything they want.

Finally, I think it worth my while to emphasise the point that is made in paragraph 29. We want our young people to meet learning targets and to have

“a full experience of school life”.

Jeremy Balfour mentioned that, too. Gone are the days of academic results being the be-all and end-all. When I met Universities Scotland representatives this morning, they made the point that employers are looking for graduates who are rounded and ready to start work, and not just the people who are most academically able.

For all our children, we want the best possible outcomes. To that end, I am happy to commend the draft guidance and the motion.