Meeting of the Parliament 19 November 2025
In my opening speech, I talked about the crushing workload challenges that teachers face as a result of the expansive and unnecessary bureaucracy that is built around our curriculum. The other major challenge that we hear about more than any other from teachers and school staff is the lack of support for children with additional needs. Much like workload and bureaucracy, that challenge is not new, but the situation has gotten much worse recently. The grim reality is that many children with additional support needs must catastrophically fail before the support that they need is put into place. Trauma has become a prerequisite of support, when it could be avoided entirely.
There is a range of reasons for that, one of which is that the underpinning legislation is simply out of date and is no longer fit for purpose. The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 set out rigid criteria for a co-ordinated support plan, which is the only kind of plan for children with additional support needs that has statutory underpinning. That makes it the only plan that gives a child and their parents or carers the option of going to a tribunal for redress if their needs are not met. In hindsight, the criteria for a CSP should never have been included in the bill; they should have been set out in regulations, which would have made it much easier for them to evolve in response to changes in our schools and society at large. For example, we have massively expanded access to mental health counsellors in schools, which is an area of progress that we should all be proud of. However, because those councillors are located in schools, they do not count as a separate source of support. The 2004 act requires there to have been support from at least two sources for at least 12 months in order for a child to qualify for a co-ordinated support plan. The step forward in access to mental health support has perversely led to a step backward in access to CSPs for some young people.
However, that is far from the whole story. It certainly does not explain why only one in every 150 children who has a recognised additional support need have a CSP. Not every child who has additional needs requires a CSP, but thousands more do, and they are not able to get one. The 2004 act needs to be updated, which must include revising the criteria for a CSP, as well as creating a power for those plans to be updated by regulation in future. The Greens were disappointed when the Scottish Government announced that it would drop the proposed learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill in this session of the Parliament, as that would have been our opportunity to at least fix that aspect of the 2004 act.
I hope that the next Government makes the time for an LDAN bill and for a full revision of the 2004 act, either as part of that bill or through a stand-alone piece of legislation. Changing legislation alone will not solve the huge challenges that are faced by young people with additional needs and those trying to support them, but it is an essential part of the process.
The other area for improvement is staffing. Children with complex needs are often supported and cared for by staff who have no specific training in that area at all. That is why the Scottish Greens have been working with the Scottish Government on proposals for a qualification and registration system for ASN assistants.
There are solutions to the problems that our schools face. This Parliament should be far more focused on those solutions than is often the case in these debates, but I am glad that we have at least had the opportunity to discuss those issues. They could not be more important to the people we represent—individuals, families and communities—and to our society as a whole.
17:00