Hansard

Deciding the best route for any child through education will always be tough. For every change in educational thought there will always be a question mark over its impact on some children, and never has that been truer than when it comes to children with additional support needs.

The context of the debate is key. In the 1970s and early 1980s, we rightly saw changes in thought with regard to the rights of children to be educated irrespective of their level of disability. In the early noughties, with the introduction of section 15 of the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc Act 2000, it became an expectation that all children would attend mainstream school unless certain exceptional circumstances applied to them. Of course, I welcome the principle of mainstreaming where appropriate and where the correct support is provided, and that is why we will support the Scottish Government’s motion.

As Liz Smith pointed out, the issue is not with the legislation itself but with how it is interpreted by local authorities and how support is provided. If the legislation is intended to be in the best interests of the child, adhering to principles of social cohesion and integration that we all agree on, how do we ensure that the well-meaning policy is executed on a case-by-case basis so that the needs of individual children are always duly considered?

As members have highlighted, there are concerns about the support that pupils are getting. I have dealt with cases in my region in which parents have raised concerns about the support that their children have been getting at school. In one case, a child’s additional learning support outside the classroom was cut from around seven hours to one and a half hours.

Charities, too, have raised their concerns, as many members have mentioned. Last year, Enable Scotland reported that seven in 10 pupils with learning disabilities were not getting enough time or attention from teachers to meet their needs. In an Enable survey, a huge 85 per cent of young people with learning disabilities reported that they did not get the same chances to take part in games as everyone else in school. As Enable points out, those figures highlight that mainstreaming does not always mean inclusion. Simply being present at school does not mean that a child becomes, by default, a part of the spectrum of school life, and we must address that.

We need to look again at the context to understand the concerns that have been raised by charities. What support is there in mainstream schools? How consistent is that support across the 32 local authorities, and is the support at the level that it needs to be at? We know that there is disparity between local authorities’ definitions of additional support needs and what constitutes mainstreaming. Although the 2004 act established a broad definition of additional support needs, it falls to individual councils to define what constitutes additional support needs within those very loose boundaries, meaning that the occurrence of additional support needs across local authorities can range from just 6 per cent of pupils in North Lanarkshire to 35 per cent of pupils in Aberdeenshire.

Since 2012, the average local authority spend per additional support needs pupil has fallen by 11 per cent. Even if the spending decisions are being taken at the local level, we still need to take them into full consideration when discussing national legislation. The number of learning support staff in primary schools has been cut by 19 per cent over the past four years and in secondary schools there has been a 20 per cent reduction in the number of learning support staff. Over the same period, the number of behavioural support staff in primary schools has been cut by 58 per cent.

The country’s largest teaching union, the Educational Institute of Scotland, has raised concerns over cuts to special school assistance provisions, highlighting that the cuts in numbers have left the teachers who are available to deal with children with learning disabilities stretched and unable to cope. The EIS has noted that teachers not being able to meet the pupils’ needs has damaged teacher morale and made teachers and their pupils feel undervalued and stressed.

On top of that, we know that 98 per cent of the education workforce feel that teacher training does not adequately prepare them for teaching young people who have learning disabilities and that 70 per cent of pupils with learning disabilities do not get the time or attention from teachers that is required to meet their needs. The pressures on teachers are rising, and many members who are in the chamber today would like to hear what is being done to reassure staff in mainstream education that they will begin to feel better equipped to support children with special educational needs.

It is correct to say that we have made significant strides in recent decades in ensuring that our children have been educated regardless of their disability, and I am pleased that the Government motion acknowledges the need to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and the practical experience of children.

Now, more than ever, it is important that we continue to make positive progress on this front, which is why local authorities and organisations must be given proper support. In recent years, we have seen a worrying trend in the budgets for pupils with additional support needs and that will only halt progress.

We need to look at the bigger picture and work closely across all our local authorities—and across this chamber, no matter which area we represent—to ensure that pupils with additional support needs continue to get the best opportunities when starting out in life.