好的 MORMING, and welcome to the sixth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2024. We have apologies this morning from Ruth Maguire, MSP and Ben Macpherson MSP, and I would like to therefore welcome Stewart McMillan, who is joining us this morning as a substitute member of committee. Good morning, Stewart. So our first item of business is to invite Mr McMillan to declare any relevant interests. Thank you, C Actor, I have no relevant interests, to declare. That's very convenient. Thank you very much. The second item on our agenda is an evidence session on the additional support for learning inquiry, which starts today. This is our first formal session on this inquiry, which will consider how the Education Additional Support for Learning Scotland Act 2004 has been implemented and how it is working in practice 20 years on. We will focus on three themes throughout the inquiry, the first being the implementation of the presumption of mainstreaming, the second being the impact of Covid-19 on additional support for learning and the use of remedies as set out in the act. Today we will focus mainly on the first and third themes. Therefore, I welcome in no particular order Susan Quinn, convener of the Education Committee from the Educational Institute of Scotland, EIS, Mike Corbett, National Officer Scotland of NESUWT, Peter Bain, Executive Headteacher, Open High School and Tiree High School, Tiree Primary School, Analysmo Primary School and President of School Leaders Scotland. Matthew Cavanaugh, ASN Committee, Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, SSTA. Sylvia Hockney, Education convener at Glasgow City Unicent branch, Unicent Scotland. Welcome all and thank you for your written submissions. You provided ahead of this meeting. We are going to move straight to questions from members. We have Michelle Thompson joining us online who is going to kick off the morning. Good morning and thank you for attending everybody. What I wanted to do with this first, good morning everybody. I hope you can hear me now, can you? Yes. What I wanted to do was to kick off the session with a bit of sort of framing out because the feedback that you've all given to the call for inquiry is very, very content rich. First of all, I wanted to explore just at summary level what you see today as the expected benefits of the presumption of mainstreaming. I'm asking that question because, of course, we had anticipated benefits when the policy was put in place and we've got a lot of data to draw on. That's my first open main framing question. The second one, which we can cover, is what do you see are the main impacts of implementation of the policy on children with complex needs? If you can just keep it at a summary level because there's a lot of detail, I suspect, that we're going to get into. What do you see as the expected benefits today and what are the impacts of implementation of the policy? Perhaps everyone in the panel would like to come in at this point. Who would like to go first? Susan Quinn. Thanks for that, Michelle. It's a really interesting question. I suppose what most of us would have thought would have been the potential positives of the presumption of mainstreaming would have been that young people would have continued to be taught in their local area alongside their peers so that they were continuing to be part of a community where they were brought up, where they were working and playing with the children that they lived with. That would be the kind of shorthand of the real summary of what the potential was around presumption. I think that the impact, as we see it, is that because of under-resourcing and because of the challenges that schools face, the needs of the young people who are in mainstream are not being met as well as teachers and others would want to see. That large-class sizes and the growing number of complex needs that are being addressed are meaning that it is very difficult to meet the needs of young people at this time in the mainstream setting. That is the summary level of that. There is a lot more behind that in terms of the impact of Covid that we have seen in the past three or four years, but that was also an issue pre-Covid in terms of the ability for schools to meet the needs of our young people in mainstream schools. I guess that the knock-on effect for our specialist provision too, because although we are talking about presumption of mainstream, what we have seen is that the more complex needs in our specialist provisions have become more complex and more challenging to address in the knock-on effect there. Those schools that have more complex needs have historically got more complex. The children who would have historically attended a complex needs school are now attending an additional support needs establishment. Those children who were attending an additional support needs establishment are attending a mainstream school alongside the young people who we would have been expecting to be addressed through the presumption of mainstream. You have still got a level in those tierings that we would have been expecting to be addressed in the presumption of mainstream. Thank you for that question as well, Michelle. It is crucial to the whole agenda and my response would be that the presumption of mainstream is something that should be aspired to for every youngster. I think where it falls down is certainly under funding, under resources, lackey training for staff, particularly ASN staff. Discuss with this committee the last time I was here, on a similar subject, that we have a very underutilised resource in ASN staff. Because of the way it is funded, we tend to have ASN staff in front of children and that is the only hours that we allocate to it. We need to be building in nationally a formula that allows for additional hours for every member of the ASN staff in every school to receive CLPL opportunities, to receive an opportunity to discuss with teachers the individual needs of the children that they are supporting, an additional amount of time that will allow them to upskill and increase their knowledge in the support that they have to give these youngsters. At the very basic level, if we could build in a formula that insists or advocates for that additional time allocation to support the ASN staff, that would actually go a huge way to solving many of the issues that arise with the presumption of mainstream. Sitting above that is an expectation level. I think that the expectation by many that the presumption of mainstream should be available for everyone is an ideal principle, but there will always be a certain amount of youngsters for very complex reasons that it will not be suitable for. I think that because we are insistents on that universal level of support, it is so strong that it is actually disadvantaging that small number of pupils where an alternative setting may be better. Finally, and possibly most importantly, and highlighted by Muir and Hayward and in the Morgan report, is the need to recognise the term mainstream itself. We have a presumption that mainstream is about going to school between nine and half three and that everybody has to go to school between nine and half three and they all have to do a set of eight curricular areas in the BGE and they all have to do five subjects in the senior phase etc and that they all have to be in the building and we need to stop that. We need to recognise that every individual within our school system do have individual needs and some of these needs might be that they are coming in later or some of these needs might be that they are being taught in a workplace. I am not suggesting an S1 going to a workplace but we do have to change our insistence on mainstream schooling being nine to half three and if we do that then the presumption in mainstream and the level of provision that we give to each youngster with the SN would be far better fulfilled and we would actually achieve the goal but again I agree with Susan that it does require additional funding and I am adding that it must come with additional CLPL. Thank you, Peter. Sylvia, can I invite you now, please? Hi, yes. I make the presumption of mainstreaming in the act in 2004. Yes, in its ideology of all children born within Scotland should walk into their local or go into their local establishment whichever way you get into your establishment, whether it's in early years, whether it's a primary or whether it's a secondary because it's inclusiveness and it creates a view of that there's diverse within society and it's an acceptance of that diverse within society but the problem has been since 2004 that, yes, there's been cuts in education for the peripheral of the education of psychologists, speech and language therapists to support that inclusiveness. That support has been withdrawn over decades. The school estate, the buildings themselves, where complex needs pupils who would have gone to a complex needs school, there is no place for them to go because the buildings themselves are full to capacity so they are now either in ASN schools or they're in mainstream co-located units. Those are complex needs with little staff training for support staff who are the lowest paid and the least trained, the impact on the children within needs establishments and the children who are there has been at a crisis point. Thanks, Sylvia. Mike, can I invite yourself now? Yes, thanks. Surely the aim at the beginning and the biggest benefit that we wanted at the beginning was the best support for each child as appropriate but the impact has been, as many have already said, a lack of resourcing is a major issue and I'm sure we'll return to that in more detail. The very fact that over the past 20 years there's been an explosion in numbers with an identified additional support need and I think as others have touched on already, maybe we need to be the focus and the terminology almost and just looking at how we support all pupils because that term of additional support needs, while I completely understand where it comes from, I think that sometimes, you know, some then see that as a, well, it's a minority interest somehow and is that maybe why it's not had the resource devoted to it that's needed over the years. I mean, there are issues for pupils as we've heard who are not getting the appropriate support. There are knock-on impacts on other pupils in mainstream schools some of the time because of what's needed for pupils that additional support needs. Obviously there's an impact on families trying to get the right support for their child or children and obviously there's an impact on teachers as well who are trying to deal with all of this without far too often the appropriate support that they need. I think that the one statistic I would point to, we've got where a dedicated additional support needs survey last year and one of the headline stats from that was when members were asked if pupils with ASN received the support to which they're entitled, 35% of our members said rarely. So it's all very well to have in principle a policy that we'll agree with. I think that everyone is in agreement that we should be pursuing this policy but clearly we're not fulfilling it at the moment for some of these reasons that I've mentioned in some of the others I've touched on. Thanks, Mike. And Matthew, thank you for... Hi, yeah, I think that social inclusion is one of the intended benefits of the presumption of mainstreaming and agreeing with what my colleagues have said that that's something that we're all absolutely on board with and want to see. Improving learning through a diverse provision for our young people is a massive part of the benefits that can happen through schools. Having young people learning together across society, learning about one another and learning about themselves within that society has been, sorry, remained some things that we've all got a map issue as a goal. The impacts, I think that the challenges for provision of this kind of educational experience in mainstream are profound and wide range and we've heard so many different ones within the environmental challenges. The specialisms of teachers a lot has to go and be spread more broadly whereas within ASN specialist learning environments like the one that I work in we're able to meet individual pupils' needs with a greater degree of specialism and experience. I think that for looking at the consequences we're seeing more young people experiencing bullying that leave mainstream secondary schools and end up in alternate provision. We see an increased level of EBSNA pupils that aren't attending school for all sorts of social relationships reasons. There's a lack of specialist support in general mainstream secondary schools. All of these things can be provided within specialist provisions. I think that's really important to remember because in specialist provisions like the one that I work in, we've staffed that work with partners on a day-to-day basis and we've staffed that have a great ability to meet the needs of individual pupils who they know better and that's something that in a mainstream secondary school or a mainstream primary school or a nursery, there's not that ability to have that degree of support and that's the strength outside of the mainstream and I think that that is sadly one of the unexpected consequences of the presumption of mainstreaming. Matthew Michels, is there anything you want to come back in with? You're okay, that's great. We've spoken a bit there about the presumption of mainstreaming but I want to ask about how that's perhaps understood by the parent population I suppose and then how it's implemented within schools specifically where there might be an additional support for learning hubs. Here in Edinburgh there's a bit of an issue at the moment where parents have been told that they can't get to the schools with the enhancement support basis but that's because the councillor made the decision to roll them out into every school to give additional so again it's that communication and so I was wondering so how is the duty of the mainstreaming understood and implemented on the ground so that parents understand within schools and second question I want to ask is around the flexibility to look about Peter in terms of potential hybrid models because we have heard or I have heard that that flexibility isn't being offered and it should be being offered to allow as many people to take part in education as possible so I was wondering if you could perhaps comment on that and can I therefore come to you first Peter if that's okay? Yeah certainly thanks and using one of my schools as an example, Oben High School has a severe and complex needs facility within it it's referred to as a learning centre and the use of learning the term learning centre is in a number of local authorities it's quite common in rural areas where the schools are so far apart that you would possibly not have a learning centre or a severe and complex needs additional facility in that area because it's just too far to travel and so it's quite common so in Argyll and Buten there are a number of them because of the distance travelled and I think in these schools that particular level of support is very very good because we've been doing it for 20 odd years and we've learned a lot as we've gone along the level of support that is required for some youngsters with very high levels of additional support needs is such that it is adequately resourced at that level I think that the flexibility of the curriculum for youngsters who are unable to either physically or mentally engage in many mainstream classes the additional provision that's put in and the alternative provisions works very well so for example we have a large number of children with various degrees of autism who would maybe go and do more outdoor learning and this is covered in an HMI publication where we're specifically mentioned so they'll do more outdoor learning rather than maybe doing science experiments with them because they may not wish and this is crucial but they may not wish to spend their time or they may not be able to spend their time doing a great deal of science work but they are going to benefit from some outdoor learning or they're going to benefit from maybe doing more hospitality work which again for a rural area particularly Oban where it's a tourist destination that's going to help them more focus on their job prospects when they leave school so the presumption in mainstream ideology about it's not just about providing an alternative curriculum it has to be about providing an alternative curriculum that's going to suit the needs and the desires of the young people to make their way in life after school and I think that quite often in the commentaries in the subject that is very much overlooked we seem to just be talking about putting in a provision it has to be a tailored provision that's useful and of course you can learn lots about science in the outdoors as well can't you? Yes, so that point was mainly about certificated science and the second point building on from that as you've mentioned that convener is that we have to stop trying to insist that everybody is doing national qualifications when we have a whole suite of different qualifications that are available to our young people who then can use that and prove to employers that they have the necessary skills and experience that would be useful to whatever job area that they wish to move into and again that's part of that flexibility so I think at that level it works very well I think that it's not working is because of the explosion and numbers that Mike was talking about earlier that we have seen since pre Covid there are so many additional support needs issues sitting below severe and complex needs that schools are facing on a daily basis and our additional support needs assistance whilst they are brilliant are not being given enough time and enough support to develop the skills to help the teachers deal with the explosion and numbers of mid-range ASN issues and that is creating the most problem I think that some of those issues would be resolved so I think it was Matthew that mentioned the attendance issues and again we talked about this the last time we were here about lappers, youngsters who are not staying in a classroom for a variety of reasons what could be the alternative that would give them an educational experience that would benefit them we need a strategy to deal with that why are they no longer staying in a class and no longer interested why are we not able to hook them in that's an additional support need they may not have a diagnosis but they're not going to class and staying there in ever increasing numbers as you can see from the attendance figures so we need to work on that and then on top of that there is the rise in especially in dyslexia where we've seen a huge I can't remember the exact percentage but there's at least a 10% rise in dyslexia for example and so where is the additional training that we're giving everybody to cope with that but it is a numbers game the explosion especially in the mid range is not being catered for and I think additional staffing but it's not just staffing, it has to be training because we've got loads of staff and if we train them more effectively and we gave them time then they would deal with the numbers better I know we are coming on to some questions that are in both of those themes that you spoke about shortly but can I bring in Susan Quinn? Your opening question was around whether parents are aware of their rights under presumption of mainstream and I suppose it might be for the parent groups to be able to respond fully to that I think for the most part local authorities now have systems in place that will ensure that young people are coming through their lear sector into primary and into secondary to work with parents to make sure that they're aware of their voice being heard and them advocating for their child around what's right for them the challenge is that sometimes they'll presume that because a school has a unit in it that that's automatically going to be where their child will be supported and with the best will in the world that's not going to be the case depending on the local authority you're in so I work in a campus where we have a language and communication resource predominantly historically been for young people who are on the autistic spectrum but it's a Glasgow-wide resource it's attached to our campus it's run by the other primary school they lead on it because young people we don't have one in every single school so just because the young people come to my school doesn't mean that they'll be prioritised for a place in that unit because it's a local authority resource and that's the case across the piece because you can't possibly have every single establishment having a specialist provision for every single need as Peter said the number, the range of need is growing and changing why that is that's for somebody bigger and brighter than myself to determine and to work on but there are a whole lot of issues around you so the better healthcare that our young people get at the very earliest stages leads to changes the situation around Covid has led clearly led to changes and I think an awareness of additional support needs so there's a wee bit of celebrity out there now that is making people go that's something to investigate and that's for the benefit because it is good for people to know what is affecting their life and how they can deal with it but the challenge then around that is how that's addressed to the situation of schooling and I absolutely agree the opportunities for flexibility and alternative pathways and alternative options are vital but we need to be really clear those are resource heavy for a single young person to go on an outdoor event from a mainstream primary school requires them to get there if it's not in their own place so that's not necessarily going to be affordable by the parents so it's going to be the school or the local authority that's going to have to provide the transport arrangements you generally are going to require to have more than one adult present even for one child because of the nature of the need you can't just have one person working with them because if you need to get support or otherwise then that's there so the flexible options are the things that we should be aiming for and looking to enhance but we need to be really clear those are resource heavy around what's there and I finally pick up in Peter's point about the qualifications I don't think it's just the nationals that we need to be acknowledging here around the implications for it in mainstream primary we are having to assess young people using the standardised assessments at primary 1, primary 4 and 7 okay we can choose not to do primary 1 but at primary 4 and primary 7 and yeah they can get the support that they get in their class but if it doesn't meet their needs if it's not what's there then that reflects on what we can say as a school that then reflects on what a local authority reports in terms of their achieving a level and it's that emphasis on attainment over achievement that is problematic for providing a flexible and alternative approach to supporting young people with additional support needs because if we're constantly saying right the aim is that we get them to this point so that they can pass this test or this part of it then somehow or other the flexible route for them to be ignored somewhere down the line because it's not going to teachers and others can assess what you see outside in the woodlands but it does need to tick a box in the assessment arena Thanks Susan, the flexibility I mean some of the comments there probably pertain more to what would be those that have got some real complex needs but Peter's spoken at length about those with that mid range that are still could, should perhaps be offered a sort of flexibility in terms of their learning as well that may not be as resource heavy in terms of just dipping in and out and having learning in different environments I mean we have heard from families that might find that beneficial can I maybe come to Sylvia to pick up on some of these points Just on what parents understand from an early years which is my background in ASN and mainstream I've worked in most of my career has been in ASN educational establishments but from early years the staff within the early years practitioners quickly are aware of the diversity or the neurodiversity child to the neurotypical child and they will pick up and develop strategies and practices that they know that the school will have to use but the parents are never informed and the staff are never encouraged to show the alternative pathway where should that child attend a school when they're leaving early years it is only focusing on mainstream your local mainstream primary even though the practitioner staff will know there is additional support needs establishments within distance that these children could possibly more be suited to to meet their needs parents are never informed and the staff in the early years have never to mention what other alternatives are out there so if a parent hasn't got hasn't that awareness or they don't understand they have a voice or parents who even do have a voice who say no I definitely want my child in mainstream because I think it will be better for them for a variety of reasons and a parent who wants a child because they failed their child will be better suited for an ASN establishment they have a fight on their hands to get there they absolutely have to involve their local MP they have to go to their health visitor they have to go to their GP to try and get their child where they need and that's only the parents who have a voice who know that they have a voice and they will get their child in there but these establishments are then are full to capacity and there isn't anywhere for them to go other than the co-located unit within the mainstream where staff are not trained they are not trained in the complex needs of the children that are coming along and they have to learn on the way so and also if the child who's been in early years and they have developed their strategies and their coping mechanisms and they move into the mainstream primary even in the co-located can't sustain that they are then put on a a shorter timetable so their parents are then disadvantaged because they have to come in you should speak to parents on that but they either have to come in late they've got work to go to they've got to get their children in at 10 o'clock instead of 9 o'clock because of for absolutely the right reasons it's the bustle at that time that child can't cope so they have to come in later day within the school which parents would find their child has been disadvantaged Before I bring Matthew in on this Willie Rennie's got a supplementary there I'm really interested in what you're saying Sylvie and I think everybody else was nodding when you were saying it so it's not so much that there's a presumption of mainstreaming there's almost a rule that it's mainstreamed is that right? Yes That's a nice short I like short succinct questions from my colleagues on webinar please I think that's a good point it's a default position rather than a rule I think but what Sylvie was saying struck a big good it's useful probably for you to know that I'm a full time teacher in charge of pastoral care in a ASN secondary in Glasgow and I predominantly work with young people who have learning disabilities and what Sylvie was saying about the parents' limited ability and limited confidence to access to these resources and have have the language and the capacity to understand what's available is a massive issue in terms of inclusion it's difficult for me to do my job in meeting my pupils needs when I'm the only one that really can advocate for the rights of that young person and that family I'm quite often supporting families with DLA applications for example because the families that struggle to have the literacy and the social capital I'm not sure if that's the correct term but the ability to access these kind of resources there's a lack of knowledge and that in turn is fed by this deficit view that the mainstream provision is the best one is the right one and that if you're outside of the mainstream somehow that's the second division provision and following from that my thinking about this question is that it really goes to the heart of our understanding of what schools do and what wellbeing is in terms of my view of my job and what inclusion is for Scotland beyond my own job and beyond the ASN committee and the SSTA wellbeing is something that has to be done with individuals and families and that speaks to what was said earlier about the importance of flexibility and the adaptability of the curriculum we need specialists who know what's out there I think that there are lots of qualifications for example in the senior phase that are suitable for the kind of young people that we're thinking of but if you're in a mainstream school and if you've ended up in a mainstream school by default it might be that your curricula specialist secondary teachers aren't as aware of the personal development awards or independence awards that are available and most suited to the needs of that young person where for example literacy can be can be celebrated can be can be something that is achieved and matters whereas for a secondary specialist English teacher actually it's just what comes to mind but for a teacher within a classroom of a great number of pupils who should be struggling to get the best that they can get it limits the breadth that I was talking about earlier of provision it's very very difficult teachers can't be teaching at all sorts of different levels within the same classroom it's not fair on the teacher it's not fair on the young person and the needs of the individuals within that class if we've got greater flexibility and if we can support parents in knowing that there's that flexibility in range of qualifications and opportunities out there then we can provide to those young people what they deserve in their education Thank you Matthew Can I move to questions now from Ross Greer I'm interested in panel's views on the relationship between the level of need the complexity of need and resources that are allocated to it particularly in mainstream settings for the purposes of this question distinguished certainly between mainstream and special schools have been interested in Matthew's experience on the latter but particularly for everybody else do you think it's typical in a mainstream setting for there to be an acknowledgement that more complex needs require and therefore get more complex additional resources or is there a tendency towards more of a blanket approach that all kids with additional needs in a mainstream setting get some kind of additional support but there's not a recognition that some needs are more complex than others have been interested in if you think that there is actually a follow through between complexity and resource allocated In practical terms there won't be I think local authorities will have their means of staffing mainstream establishments I can't speak to the whole 32 but my own local authority has within their staffing allocation a percentage that is about additional support needs and it's then based on the number of children but it's been the same percentage for well over a decade it wasn't a big enough percentage a decade ago it's certainly nowhere near a big enough percentage now in terms of the allocation and it doesn't take account there of it's then a presumption that everybody's got 5% of their cohort with additional support needs when in any one year one school might have 35% and another school might have 10% and if that 10% is in a big school then it's 10% of 400 and you're 35 so of 70 you're getting less even though you've got a bigger percentage of your young people you've got fewer actual physical bodies it won't take account of the range of needs there's never in my 35 years of teaching being that kind of consideration in terms of being able to staff specifically around that because again your year on year changes to what's there the young people are in front of you and that becomes then more complex I think what's needed is an ability for local authorities and within their budgets and it is about that budgets and resources and all the rest of it but it's then whether or not they have the capacity to respond to the requests from an individual establishment about specific young people who have more complex needs so if someone arrives in your school with diagnosis of autistic spectrum with ADHD and a bit of turets in it and that's a real person then you need to be able to respond to that need quickly and it's difficult within for local authorities always to do that and it's not necessarily always about them finding the place elsewhere because the place of elsewhere are full and whatever but the simple answer to your question is no there's no at my experience no differentiation in terms of the resource provided at core level some local authorities will have different means by which to address individual need at individual school but that'll be what's raised by a head teacher or a parent or whatever else can I just pick up on that if that's okay? if I could just pick up on Susan's point just one specific bit and then bring my Peter Ruslan to come in as well Susan my correct me from wrong understanding as well as the question of level resource what you're also saying in terms of the correct resource is that there are situations where you might have a member of staff in one school who specialises in a particular kind of support but in the nature of school children with that particular need move on there's a child in another school who might have that kind of need but the local authorities aren't flexible enough to make sure that staff are in the right place because when you were saying that what struck me was that one of the very first meetings I had after I got elected 15-year-old with hearing impairment who on our first day of high school a member of staff was introduced to or said this would be your one-on-one member of staff and they said hi there lovely to meet you I usually work with kids with autism but I'm sure we'll figure this out between us so I don't think it's necessarily that there's not a willingness by local authorities to be flexible around it I think there are a range of reasons why those kinds of things can't happen so very often Sylvia will speak more in behalf of support for learning workers but very often if it's a support for learning worker who's been identified to work with a young person and they're lucky enough to get the training or even if they have developed the level of experience with the young person year-on-year they won't necessarily there won't necessarily be the facility to move on with that young person or to move around and there are a variety of reasons for that one being to do employment laws and all the rest of it another to do with the fact that particularly support for learning workers they very often work in their communities when we're talking about mainstream they very often live in a very close proximity so to ask them to move to a school so again either across the city or across a rural area would be a financial detriment to them to have to do that and in terms of teaching staff who have developed a specialism around a particular area and be able to move within the mainstream setting your numbers of actual specialists have reduced so much that actually what you have are core teachers who have developed developed areas of specialism because they've had a young person in front of them for a year they're not going to move to another school because that's not there anymore because they're still part of a school's core team as a class teacher they just will have developed there are complex reasons why it's not not always easy for local authorities to be charitable to local authorities on this occasion to say that it's not necessarily always for the want of thinking about that but there are just many reasons why that's not problematic and it's why you need more opportunities everywhere because what we're seeing is that the numbers are growing so much that you do need even if you were to say you need to use a member of staff this year because a child's moved on in August I could take in another child that would have required that person anyway so Mike Peter I want to come in on this that's okay Ross I think there's a lot of interesting things in the research that was published in September about provision for pupils with complex additional support needs but one thing that struck me what you're just saying Ross is that a model of support based on need rather than diagnosis was supported by the services involved in the research however there's a perception amongst many parents and carers that having a diagnosis does impact on the level of support a child or young person can access so in other words there's certainly a perception amongst many parents and carers that if you get a label that somehow brings more funding which builds on the point that Peter was making earlier about getting across to many parents and carers and others that there is support there for those without a formal diagnosis you know there is support there but then to come to your other point about you know the resourcing and how that resourcing is used or I would say it's maybe diverted I think what tends to happen in practice certainly in mainstream schools is when they do trouble that's the local authority of the school itself does try and address complex additional support needs of a young person that is in their care for whatever reason sometimes there is then a knock-on impact so whether that's the teacher in the mainstream class no longer has ASN support in their mainstream class because this other person is getting one to one support but there's other kids with additional support needs in the class that are not getting quite the service that they need whether it's in the specialist hubs or units within mainstream schools again because someone maybe is needing more one to one support there's not enough time to give to others or if you go beyond that and sometimes resource will be made available for example to take a pupil off-site and give them again specialist provision a single pupil or a group of pupils because that's what suits them best again that's supporting time resource etc away from others in the school who need it and it's a pretty patchwork picture as ever so I think some schools and local authorities will try and address things and divert resource where it's needed but there is a knock-on impact elsewhere I think Thank you Ross to this answer is as complex as the issue with the multitude of ASN actually to agree with Susan I think we do have to be charitable to the local authorities and the plight that they face as well which is there is no an endless pot of money and the level of ASN and the complexity of ASN is growing every year the way in which local authorities in schools in my experience work is inconsistent across the country for a start there is no single method of the allocation of ASN resource to schools across each local authority I've choose my own local authority just to give you an example of where I see it does work to a degree within the limits of the limited pot and I agree with Mike if you have a label you're automatically getting support first of all if you've got a label the chances you're going to try being off if you don't provide support is very very high and therefore local authorities will put all their resources first and foremost into ensuring that those who have a diagnosis will be supported as outlined by the medical professionals so if you're for those youngsters that I described earlier being in a severe and complex needs facility or part of the mainstream school they now people will always say they don't get enough support but generally we could assume that they're getting a very good level support if they have severe and complex needs the trouble with that is local authorities the more youngsters who do have that diagnosis and therefore that level of support in that facility even if that facility is more flexible than in most mainstream that does divert most of the money to that cohort of young people away from the ever increasing mid-range of ASN that are in the classrooms that the teachers and the additional support needs staff are most concerned about and they're most concerned about that group because there is a lack of suitable number of staffing and a suitable level of training to deal with that of increasing number in the mid-range and again to be fair to the local authorities as well how do they decide where the money's going it's about discussions between the local authority central team staffing and school staffing over the individual needs of youngsters sitting in a class or in a school and there is always going to be some degree of disagreement over what that need is because one of them is trying to keep the pot available for 10 schools for example and the head teacher and usually a deputy for example is making an argument all based on the needs of an individual school and there's no enough money to provide the level of support, the level of need that the school is asking for so there's that dichotomy that goes on all the time and that's why nobody is ever happy the local authority is ever increasingly having to spread more thinly and that doesn't make them look good and the school's not getting as much money on staffing as they need to cope with the need that they can see every day so that's no working either and then on top of that I think there is a political game that's played with all schools and all local authorities are trying to maintain staffing levels within individual schools that may not be the best use of resources for the authority as a whole and to give you an example of what I'm talking about so you may have a youngster who comes into the high school in S1 and they may have a particular level of need and the authority in the school may have agreed that each number of hours would be set aside for that young person which will never be agreed as being enough but then that support stays with that youngster and it might be one to one with that youngster but is that youngster grows in confidence and experience in familiarity with a secondary school setting for example there is an argument that the youngster should be and there is mention of this in the guidance that youngster should be developing a degree of independence that they don't need somebody sitting with them one to one constantly and that was the case for four years if systems failed if a youngster, for many, not all but for the majority of that mid range if an ASN is sat with a youngster one on one for four years if systems failed because how have we prepared them for life after school that's not to say that we should be removing their support by the end of S4 but it should still be that we are able to more fully utilise that ASN member staff with their appropriate training if they get aside time for that ASN member staff to talk to a teacher for example that ASN could perhaps by S2 divert some of that time to be helping other people in the class and then by S3 there is even more time they could be helping three or four people but that level of communication does require communication in sorry, CLPL and time to talk that level of nuance that would better distribute the resource is not happening on the original point on the first question if we set aside some time to allow that to happen the resource overall would be better distributed and benefit far more youngsters within the limited pot that the Scottish Government and the local authorities are always going to have Sylvia? Ross, you'd asked initially the level of need across Scotland I had been given facts from which came actually from South Lanarkshire in service day and this had been delivered what we do know is that we have got three times more children in society with additional support needs and there's various reasons for why that is and I'm not sure if we're going to go into that today but there are reasons, there are clear reasons around why we have more children in society who are neurodiversity there's one third more in primary school from a support for learning workers perspective or a pupil support we'll take because that's the name that we can use across Scotland when you've employed in us any school as a support pupil support worker now you may have had a job within ASDA or I had said recently of Costa so let's say you've taken a job in Costa you would be given two weeks training before you touch any piece of apparatus you would learn about different types of beans, barista, coffee training but you leave that job and you take the job for whatever reason in a school day one you're straight in there is no induction training or very little some local authorities have some induction training for support staff you don't need any qualifications any child development any awareness of anything to do with the education system but from day one you can be told you're working with the child who's hearing impaired try and pick it up as you go along they use BSL you'll pick up some signs from the interpreter that's there you're going to work with the pupil who's ADHD the predominant support staff with support staff across Scotland have 27.5 hour contracts they start at 9 and they finish at 3 there is no pupil non-contact time there is no time given for them to look at any training CLPL that is in a world for teachers but see for support staff that very rarely exists they don't get their not allocated time to go and research look at training because they're so valuable because they're working with the most vulnerable child in the school that they can't allow them out of class to go and get training or to be given anything there lies the issue around the 27.5 hour contracts if support staff had more time at non-pupil contact time to go and look at a risk assessment even a child has started school and I don't like the use of the word label I think it's recognising that people have diverse learning they're not neurotypical children in society there are now we've got more children who are neurodiverse and we have to and their learning is in a different way it's a different style of learning and we have to learn how what brings them what entices them what is it that they want they're telling you I don't want to be in this classroom situation because it's either too noisy the lights are bright there's a slight noise somebody makes a noise beside me there's a smell we have to understand the neurodiverse brain and we're not doing it within schools but it's the support staff hearing impaired one minute somebody's ADHD a pupil has down syndrome the variety and the diverse within schools but the support staff have not been appropriately trained and they also might say well let's do all behaviours communication on an in-service day or let's do de-escalation training but if we can get our members out of cleaning cupboards on in-service day and into that training that would be more advantageous but see doing it once a year or once in every five years it's not good enough it has to be direct training and it has to be on-going thank you and that's something we've certainly heard in the last wee while Liam, do you want to bring in your theme here or do you want to leave it? yeah just a brief question which I'll direct to Peter Bain unless the rest of the panel wish to come in Peter I want to take on Mr Greer's question about co-ordinated support plans I've heard that there can be a disconnect between the requirement for a CSP and actually getting it I understand that there's a duty on the local authority to put it in place if statutory conditions are met but anecdotally I've heard that parents are getting pushed sometimes from pillar to post trying to get this in place and certainly I've heard of it taking years a decade so can you help the panel understand committee understand who has responsibility to lead on making a CSP happen such that they can be held accountable if it's not and might there be any truth in the suggestion that's due to under resourcing perhaps local authorities either might not be able to assist the conditions or ultimately put it in place very much varies between local authority and local authority I think it depends on the strength of expertise that lie in central teams ASN areas over the guidance or the policy that's provided to schools over the use of CSP CSPs so that's one limiting factor the second limiting factor is the strength of the partnership arrangements that sit in each local authority and worse that in each school community and by that I mean that CSPs are dependent on different agencies working together to support taking forward the actions within the CSP and so if you have regular meetings for example between education staff, health social workers, head-sikes the police coming at time if you have these regular meetings where there's strong partnership working in a school community you are likely to have a more effective CSP success rate in establishing them because they almost always require interagency support so if you've got a strong local partnership going on CSPs are more likely to happen and to be progressed more effectively at the practical level if you do not have that then at the local level CSPs often do not get progressed as they should get progressed because they can't get the partners to agree who's going to do what and then you ask who's responsible in my experience across a number of authorities and reading some of the responses we got from the SLS members before I came here the issue is that it's a school staff that is almost certainly taking the lead there is a common claim made right across the education community that education and teachers have become the social workers and are even virgin and becoming health professionals I'm not sure I agree with that but they're certainly taking on a social worker role far more prominently than they used to be the fact that we used to have guidance teachers that would be subject specialists and pastoral support staff now I don't know what the percentage would be really high across the schools where full time guidance is now in place because they have taken on that social worker role because the number of social workers and local authorities across the country have diminished so highly the number of educational psychologists and all the local authorities have been cut severely so we're lacking that very high professional level of diagnosis on educational psychologists who are essential to constructing the CSP which is one reason so partnership working and how strong that is creates a delay or not because CSPs are progressed quite quickly in some local authorities the delay in the partnership working the delay in the ed psychs is crucial and thereafter I've not come across a local authority being an inhibiting factor to the establishment of the CSPs I've not come across that policy that negative policy drive personally I think it's getting back to resourcing and the resourcing of partners I think that just like we're complaining that we don't have enough resources so are social workers and ed psychs and all the rest of it this one Mike wanted to come in then Matthew and then Susan so over to you Mike first on this one I think it's interesting just to quote from a recent tribunal case which is instructive because as part of the judgement it says just over 241,000 pupils in Scotland have additional support needs and of those only 1,401 ie. 2% have co-ordinated support plans and yet as we've heard earlier and many of us have been saying additional support needs have been growing exponentially so that doesn't quite compute but it reminded me of a case that we had where we had a dispute with an employer related to a special school and we were astonished firstly when we were dealing with senior people at the employer who initially did not know how many co-ordinated support plans existed in this special school and then when they went off and did the research came back and told us that a special school 100 pupils had a single pupil with a co-ordinated support plan which seemed utterly bizarre to us but I think reinforces the point that Peter's partly maiden year may be touching on Liam that there's certainly different practice going on in different places and we would say I'm not suggesting what the reasons are for that I don't know, as Peter said that I don't know if that's because there's somehow a fear that that'll attract resource but it certainly warrants a deeper investigation because there's definitely an issue there Thank you Mike. Matthew, can you follow? Yeah, I can and it leads in well what Mike's saying because I am speaking in a sense anecdotally because I'm talking about my personal experience I've been in a school where almost all of my pupils would have a right to a CSP very few actually do which would correspond with those statistics very few, if they did have would see any significant difference in the provision that they get it would if I was to return to school tomorrow morning and find out that those pupils who had a legitimate question about whether a CSP would be appropriate or not would to put that to my desk it would be my job to then progress it which would take an incredible amount of stress time or effort or the rest of it that wouldn't change an awful lot of the provision that is that I know that my pupils get I'm not suggesting by the way that I don't think it's right that CSPs are available to my pupils I think it is right but I think it's important to realise that because it's on the schools to lead on the schools on behalf of the education authority the local authority to have the responsibility for the CSPs it's a very difficult process if you're already working with health social services and other partners that were mentioned earlier so I think it's just useful to add that in Do you want to come in on this as well? Thank you I think picking up from Matthew was I think that the point is well made around the fact that for many of our young people whether it's a CSP or an additional support plan at the lower level whether it's written down or not it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to give them more resource or more time and similarly in our schools particularly our mainstream schools where there hasn't been a diagnosis confirmed or otherwise with what they see in front of them for the young people so we will have young people who may ultimately get a diagnosis of dyslexia that requires an input from a speech and language therapist and it requires an input from other people I'm not going to sit and go until I get that diagnosis we are not going to do anything with that our young people in the schools across the country regardless of whether they have a diagnosis attached to them or whether they have a CSP or otherwise attached to them will be getting the kind of level of support as much as a school can Peter's point around the need for the co-ordination and the likes is really well made it will be patchy because it will depend on whether or not your social work department that you're associated with because we know that they have their own challenges around it it will depend on whether or not you can get everybody in the room at the same time but Matthew's point around that is everything that we have to do around that then takes people away from actually working directly with the young people so to try to co-ordinate all of those things and those meetings makes it does mean that it can lead us to that a simplification of that there needs to be a consideration around where the value is around having something which takes people away from working directly with young people we need to get to a point where we can that's there it is, it's important to have records and the likes there that's important so that people know what support's been provided but it can't be to the detriment of actually working with the young person I can't work with you today because I've got to have a meeting with everybody to decide whether or not you need support we know you need support we know we need to work together to get you the support but the bit paper doesn't necessarily address that and that comes through a lot from our members and a lot across the country in terms of the need to actually be able to address that and schools will often say now that and Peter's point about social work element or otherwise schools will be expected to attend things that are called to by social work or health or otherwise we're not always able to get that reciprocated in terms of the arrangements that are there for a whole variety of reasons we don't hold that that's there and do you think the pressures on the teaching staff in terms of their diary management to hold those multi-disciplinary team meetings that might delay things and I know if you think about having to arrange those partnership means health professionals are equally pressed for time so having these might be a challenge but I'm also curious Susan how do we square off the need to get people trained which takes them out of the contact time with and the pressure to do these planning meetings it is a complex one to square it is about additional resource and Sylvia's description around support for learning workers would be one that we would see in here across the country you know where you, as a head teacher I have staff who I want to be trained we provide them with that training but that takes them away directly from the young person that they're supposed to be working with so what's happening in that hour or two that we are doing that but we personally know that that's going to be a value for the next month but it's squaring all of that and the challenges faced around being able to access the support work that can happen around other agencies and as other colleagues have said the change in dynamic around educational psychologists when I started my career and started in senior management within it you know there were significantly more educational psychologists available and they worked and saw young people on a much more regular basis they are now being drawn out of that role to train to provide training in particular areas because other people are not available to provide the training so that changes the whole area and similarly speech and language therapists have their roles have changed too that mean that it becomes more problematic and it's all to do with us trying to do more with less and on that topic of resources we're going to move into questions around that theme from Stuart McMillan please thank you certainly this morning has been quite enlightening to say at least with regards to the issue of the resources and Peter Bain you said something a short time ago with regards to the limited budget for Scotland and also local authorities and certainly the submissions that we have all throughout the submissions is the issue of the resources and so my first question is regarding the resources that we have clearly there aren't enough going in but do any if you have any estimate as to how much additional financial resource you would require on an annual basis honours and honours it's a flipping response but it's one that's there I think we have to look at what the figures that colleagues have presented here today and within our submissions and recognise some of that so if you have rising levels of needs you've got 37% increase in the school population with additional support needs you know and that's 2.8% just up from last year so that's one area so there's a figure that says we need 37% more for additional support needs to start off with you then have the enhanced specialist provision is 23% down since 2016 so there's 23% more needs to go into additional support specialist provision around that area but you need to do the complicated maths that takes 23% whatever it is over that period of time so it's going to be much much higher than 23% you have a decline of specialist teachers since 2010 within mainstream settings of 19% so there's another figure that tells us how much more we need to put into it if these are all declines we need to at least add on to get back to where we were to start with and then multiply that up from the increased range of provisions and the increased number of our young people who are now identified as having additional support needs and we need to then look and consider how we can address the wide range of provisions within that so you can have within a primary class of 20 where you have four young people who are on the autistic spectrum you have another four and this is a real class four young people who have dyslexia diagnosis or dyslexia symptoms that are being supported within the class you have another three who have English as an additional language within that class and then you also have a young person who has global delay because of medical issues at birth and that's within one class of 20 if you multiply that up across the country an individual teacher can address all of that in one go without really heavy support being put into it I think in terms of how much more it's about looking at where the reductions have taken place over the last 10 years and getting back to the points where we were at and then saying we need this much more because it's now 37% higher than it was 10 years ago Yeah and it's not just about getting back to where we were in terms of finance I can't give you any idea about the numbers but what I can tell you is that we have a different view and a better view of what schools are what learning is and what we need to be doing by inclusion and it's a lot broader than what we have in the past provided in education through school system Earlier on in the meeting I was talking about how we were thinking about wellbeing and learning is part of that for our young people we're getting young people or we're trying our best to get all of our young people ready for life in Scotland in the future and qualifications and that traditional way of thinking about learning education is very important but it's not by any means anywhere close to what we're supposed to be trying to do in schools we're thinking about how we're all much more aware and enhanced transitions are between the different stages of learning and then beyond to finding positive destinations for our young people we know that the massive increase of young people who aren't attending school for emotional behaviour reasons we know that social media digital literacy needs have exploded and expanded and have a massive negative impact that's a pejorative but you know what I'm getting at in terms of the mental health support that our young people need because of the challenging digital landscape that we're living so we need to get back where we were in terms of the percentages that Susan's talking about but we're going beyond that because we're doing more because we have a better inclusion and what learning is for and it's part of something much bigger the wellbeing of our young people everyone's wanting to come in on this and I've got a little note that I've been passed I'm keen to ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to speak and I'm therefore apologising in advance looking at the clock because I have to if time runs on too much I may have to interrupt members maybe not have to bring everyone in and witnesses as well in answering some of these questions but I can be really really concise with your responses to this that would be great Sylvia then Peter please it's just about the budget I mean I can't give you a figure on what we take to recover it all because it's decades of cuts within the education budget but what is education it's not just held up by teachers or support staff it's the peripheral that holds up the education system for children is the occupational there and crucially again it's the educational psychologist now I've just got a figure there the other day told which was from Glasgow that the educational psychologist told us that it would be one psychologist in 80 pupils it's now sitting at one psychologist in 698 so it's 1 in 700 I mean that is just imploding that cannot be sustained that's the budget that says yes you keep your teacher numbers because that's what the government want to put out but we're not cutting teacher numbers but we're cutting everything else that holds that system up that money needs to be put back and looked at the diverse within society to support these pupils Peter? Susan's quite right in the figures that she's put together are excellent in highlighting where we should be in relation to where we were using the measures of that period in time I agree with Sylvia as well that it's not just the education budget we need to be looking at because it's all the other support services in health and social work etc they're also being cut so it's not just quite how much do we need for education actually if we could reinforce the budgets of the other areas that would support education by default and therefore mean less money for education because we wouldn't need it because other support services are providing adequate level of care but crucially the whole thing is to go back to two questions what do we mean by inclusion especially given we're talking about 40-50% of kids in a school requiring that and it goes back Mike at the very beginning was talking about there's just so many kids with ASN that has that become the not why are we treating them as some discrete group given it's 40% or 37% nationally so we need to re-evaluate our ideology behind the concept of inclusion and supporting classrooms that's required thereafter and then on top of that what do we mean by curriculum and that goes back to the flexibility point why are we still seeing the curriculum as if it was the Victorian age because if we reassess our interpretation of curriculum in the modern sense and what need is for the 21st century that would alter what support that we are required to provide and in itself that may actually cost more money but it may cost less but we do need to understand what do we mean by the curriculum what do we mean by the school day what do we mean by the school is it just that building we go to and thereafter how are we inclusive to ensure that the curriculum is met and then what do we need to put in place before we can get the cost Mike, you want to come in as well, thank you very briefly and I won't repeat all the good points they've been made about increasing number of pupils and restoring all the cuts but let's not forget as well the impact of the pandemic particularly one of things like pupil mental health and behavioural issues which again need to be addressed and will require some resource as well as all of the other things that have been mentioned thank you I was noticing we've spoken a lot about training as the day has gone on and I noticed that in the submission the children's commissioner has said that in relation to that there's a lack of political while technical knowledge and capacity in implementing the right to inclusive education including insufficient education of all teaching staff which we've heard and all teaching staff can also be the support assistance that we're alluding to Sylvia but in terms of developing the skills and tackling the increase in those with mid-range as you called it Peter issues how often should training be taking place what should it look like and should it be mandatory because we have heard that sometimes they're in in service days and some people can avoid the training because it's not mandatory so Susan do you want to come in first? I'm not a great believer in mandatory training because that tends to bring negative connotations for people around having to do things and it can become problematic I think the challenge around training is time and what's there so we're speaking today about ASN you could you know I've presented here in the past about training for equalities matters then you have training just on your standard child protection health and safety side of things then we have all of what we've got to include in terms of raising attainment and everything else so some of it's not about a lack of will in terms of training around additional support needs or otherwise it's often just about the lack of time to do that Sylvia's point aside for the fact that it's for support for learning workers outside of the five days of in service they don't have any time within their contracts unless a school is building that in themselves to the detriment as we've said we spoke earlier about some of the challenges you have in terms of de-escalating issues in classrooms and that would be so much better if the teachers were capable and able to do that and it would be better for their wellbeing so therefore should this training not be mandatory because overall it would help the delivery of education for everyone including the teaching staff depends on how the person individually picks it up in terms of what's there so it is about where it takes place and how it can take place de-escalation as you've addressed is a different thing from supporting young people with additional support needs that's one aspect of additional support need training that's required in terms of de-escalation you have a huge gambat so the point would be is it worth training taking a teacher out of class or having everybody out for a session on a particular area of additional support needs when and in a secondary school everybody when they may not come across a young person with that need at that particular time so it's about that balance and about meeting the need of staff that are going to be working with young people on it because otherwise I could be trained today in supporting a young person with down syndrome for instance within the context of a mainstream school but never meet a young person who has that need in the next few years and so by the time I ever did I would need to revisit the training about what the training is and what the worth is and where we take that so absolutely training needs to be on-going throughout a teacher and a support for learning workers career but what mandatory training do we put in place because there's no one size fits all piece of training that would meet the needs of all of our young people and all of our staff within our school we have people who do specialist training and specialist qualifications and additional support needs that takes them four years of night classes to do it through universities and otherwise to get up to a particular level so it's about finding the means to provide the quality and the level of professional learning that individual teachers and individual schools need at a particular time argument would be if it is 37% of all pupils that have got an additional support for learning then teachers are coming across it and therefore it should be part of absolutely but they will have different needs so the complexity of the need means that the training that you require to support a young person who with dyslexia is different from the training you need to support a young person on the artistic spectrum and you can't just combine the two sets of training together in one session and say that you can go and do that teachers and support for learning workers require on-going professional learning to be aware of the additional support needs of the young people around them we need to be aware of the complexity of need and otherwise but at different points in all of our individual careers we will require specialist training for the young people that we are directly working with there could be a discussion point around the heads of the schools then developing a mandatory training for the teaching staff that reflects the makeup of the young people in their school I'm not sure that a head teacher would necessarily be able to develop a training program they identify the needs and therefore there's someone that can then provide the training to address those needs so additional support needs will be part of schools school improvement plan so it will be the terminology of mandatory it will be part of a schools improvement plan if that's the area of need that's required at that particular time but if you have a settled staff and you've had in-depth professional learning opportunities over a period of time because that's been your priorities in your school improvement plan do you require then to do it every single year with that same group of staff to the detriment of any other area of work I think that we absolutely need quality professional learning but the mandatory nature of it is more complex than that whether or not you can deliver something that would fit the need of what's there I've got supplementaries from a number of colleagues who take this discussion ok thank you I ended up in the school that I'm in 20 years ago after right directly after completing my probation year in mainstream secondary and the reason I ended up where I was was because I got a half day visit to the school that I'm in during my initial teacher experience that was all I got I thought it was going to be a trip to a school that I wouldn't fit in and I wouldn't like whatsoever it wouldn't be for me and it was a good opportunity to see behind the curtain and it wasn't that I arrived in the school and immediately and I'm not even joking immediately I knew that it was a school that I wanted to be in and I've been lucky enough to be there for a long time but the point is is that if you're outside of the mainstream we don't get students in the same way as mainstream schools do and I've got a real problem with that because I think it's a loss for us and for our schools because we're not getting those new teachers who've just come out of their degrees they've got a lot more enthusiasm and current knowledge based on the data of the training that they've got but those young and new teachers aren't exposed to the opportunities that there are in circumstances outside of the mainstream in education and I think you know it's for other people to decide but to me it speaks to that idea that it is the second division if you're not in the mainstream and I don't think that's acceptable we are thrilled when we get teachers that are relatively new to the profession that want to come and work in our schools that are outside of the mainstream it's a fabulous opportunity for us it's a fabulous opportunity for them and it's brilliant for our young people as well we've also been and it's not just us I know this is happening in other places we realise that that need our teachers are going shadowing teachers in primary schools that work with complex learners teachers from primary schools are coming and shadowing in our schools our teachers are going to shadow in mainstream schools and vice versa and that's because schools are taking it upon themselves they know that there's this need they know that there's a gap there and schools do what they can to address that but I feel like it should be considered as part of the initial teacher education can I bring in Liam for supplementary and then Willie Rennie and perhaps you can direct to the members that haven't responded yet thanks convener I'll ask Susan Quinn just a very brief question how many hours of specialist ASN training is given during the PGD stage I've heard anecdotally it could be between one and three hours can you confirm or deny I don't know the direct answer to it what we do know is that it will be fairly small because it's not there's a lot to fit into a very short period of time and it is one of the areas that has been raised over the years around the challenges faced in terms of the PGDE I think people would argue that's the same around lots of areas of the work that's got to be fitted into PGDE so it's about the amount of time but it could be as small as you say I think it will probably also depend on the actual initial teacher education provider because they'll each have their own summary of what's in their PGDE programme whether it's even an element that's significant in the BED remed intent for the primary sector I'm not sure even how many hours are there but I don't think it'll be as easy of trying to fit everything into a very tight box Susan, I think you've just brought it all into sharp focus just with your explanation of all the training that's required so teachers, they are specialists but in many ways they're journalists as well so you're having to cover a whole range of areas but the depth of knowledge that you require for sometimes there's one pupil who may come along just from time to time is just huge so that the enormity of this task is beyond what I actually initially thought and I just wonder do teachers feel helpless with all of this? Do they think this is just such a big task that they feel helpless that they won't be able to get sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to meet all the children's needs or do they still have hope that they can get there and provide a good quality education? What's the feeling? I think that our recently launched survey on the stand-up for quality education is based on the service of our members and it's not coincidence that ASN is one of the three pillars of that because that's what our members spoke to us about and they spoke to us about the fact that they want to be able to help people that come across their paths whether it's in an early year setting and the wee group of wee ones that are there with them or in a primary school with a class of 33 or in secondary school with the range of provision and even in our specialist provisions where there is a changing dynamic and things that are there so helplessness is something that we try to overcome but it is a very very challenging position at the moment and it is about the fact that it can't always just be that if I'm trained to work with this young person that that'll solve that problem because you still have to be able to find the time within the working day to find, you know, to work with them so working with young people to enhance their literacy skills when they have dyslexia is a labour intensive process that's the nature of the specialist provision that's got to be there so for an individual class teacher to be trying to do that even if I'm trained to do it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to be able to have the time to do it if it's one young person and I've got 30 others who have to be supported in their learning too so there is a real challenge around the work that's there I think there are things that can be done and we've spoken about those this morning in terms of the alternatives that can be provided and the additional need and support that needs to be there but I think teachers and support for learning workers recognise very very clearly that the range has changed and that that is much more challenging and since Covid has become even more challenging for them because we are addressing need that will maybe never not encounter in the volume that we have in the past and that leads us to there I've got Mike, Peter and Sylvie all wanting to come in on my original question around training and mandatoryness so can I and frequency Mike over to yourself first thanks I will get to that but just to address the initial point about teachers overwhelmed they're overwhelmed by many things but the evidence we and others have submitted makes clear that there's a keen desire for training what do they do if they don't get that training most of them go off and do whatever they can to help so we've got teachers who because of the lack of English and additional language support and I've got refugee children in their class are going on to Google Translate at night etc they'll do their absolute best they'd rather most of them have the training it doesn't need to be mandatory because some of them will come from other places with suitable experience etc but most of them want it I think the point about initial teacher education is vital in getting a proper base there but I do have a question about the quality of provision as well so I mean I was struck reading recently about the number of young women in their 20s who are getting diagnosed with ADHD in their 20s which suggests that there's a lack of perhaps knowledge ability in the medical profession to some extent so we can't expect teachers to be just taking all this on when sometimes others don't know exactly what the best approach is but the quality of the training itself is a vital factor as well thanks Sylvia and then Peter thanks two points that I'd like to make from a personal experience I've worked in complex needs schools and I was caught well at that point was called an instructor, it's a sportful learning teachers would go off in the sick or long term absence and they would try and cover but in a complex needs school in an ASN complex needs school they don't need to have a specialised training to come and work as a teacher within that school if you were a biology secondary school teacher you must have a degree in biology to work in a school but it doesn't matter what degree you have you can work with any pupil within a complex need so someone walking in to a teacher walking in with no awareness of complex needs would be expected to start off running with no training, none in place at all if the children were all operating at pre birth level on body signing we used signing which was Macaton the support staff would teach the teacher the on body signing we would teach the teacher the Macaton signing to meet the basic needs of the child if the child wanted to toilet because they couldn't communicate verbally they would use augmentative communication so we would be in that position and that hasn't changed so children who are right to that specialised teaching on the support for learning worker within mainstream we feel it should be mandatory you're employed to work in a job you've been employed with Costa their mandatory training is to operate machines we're going to work with the most vulnerable children but you're not given any basic training mandatory psychologists in our field have developed training there is an abundance of training out there but it's down to the leadership of individual schools on whether that support staff can access any of that training and it's a lottery on whether where you are at the time how many children with ASN within that school that you can work with the most vulnerable children in society and we'll train you to do that it should be mandatory Peter very quickly to give everyone some idea how many times available for such training there's five in-service days the first one will inevitably be mandatory training on child protection and getting the school up and running after teachers have been up for six weeks that just takes up there will always be a learning and teaching in service day in some form because it's the bread and butter of every school in the case of secondary schools there will almost certainly be some moderation activity that takes place across multiple schools that take up another one there will be an assessment driven one because we're driven by attainment stats in secondary school and there may be one that's set aside for whatever ad hoc things that the school improvement has there you go, there's five away already and we've not touched on any ASN work then we've got a working time agreement the poor each individual school can agree to distribute their 195 hours into particular needs that the staff and the school improvement plan deem to be most prominent in the school may or may not have put in ASN work into that but that might only be 20 hours a year that might be like an hour after school every second week so 39 weeks a year just say for it 20 hours and in that 20 hours you are going to have deep act mental work you may have to discuss career standards you may have to discuss DYW you may have to discuss the introduction of AI out of that 20 hours that might be if you're lucky directed towards ASN I agree with Susan that there shouldn't be universal mandatory training done thanks for that training done to everybody we shouldn't just say right everybody's getting dyslexia everybody's getting EAL but what I do believe is that we have professionals in our schools who know the youngsters that are in front of them and they should have the option, the ability to choose what is it that I need to be upskilled and more knowledgeable in and I think that there should be a mandatory number of hours set aside to ensure that our professionals, both the teachers and the support staff set aside an hour a week minimum to look at what they believe is their greatest need to deliver to those youngsters who deserve that level of expertise you're quite right going along with Susan's idea that we'll never be truly a professional in each discrete area but can we spend an hour a week upskilling ourselves in EAL or dyslexia to the level that we can better support young people thank you very much Peter I'm sorry in this role I've got my eye on the clock and there's a whole lot of stuff we still need to cover I'm going to be going to Stephanie Callaghan who's online now please Stephanie I want to ask a little bit about Angela Morgan's report I know certainly it documented basically what parents already knew quite often is the feedback that I got on it there but Angela Morgan did call for mainstream education to be redefined to reflect the needs of pupils who have additional support needs so I'm wondering what is it that needs to change in our schools so that we can achieve this for all pupils I would like to answer that one first will we go to Matthew I'm going to go to the other side first thank you simply I think there's a wider conversation that needs to be had about what schools are for and what they do I think that often when we're talking amongst our friends and families and amongst the wider public expectations placed on schools about attainment and about getting getting your qualifications and getting on to a good job and I think that needs to be challenged massively because that's not the be-all and end-all of education and the longer that we persist with Stephanie Stephanie Stephanie Stephanie, can you mute please because we're hearing some background noise thank you sorry Matthew No, that's alright I think that we need to really challenge this kind of view and I know it's really hard to get a grasp on the way that media will look at leatables for examples and parents and families will see a good school and other schools not being a good school but when we need to redefine mainstream education I'm strongly persuaded by that as a way forward but we have to think about what the purposes are and it's about preparing all of our young people to work together in a diverse society that is ready to take on a world after they leave and the longer we persist in the gold standard being the whatever highest and whatever you get it's something that we need to get past and that's what inclusion challenges us to do as a society and that's my brief answer to that Stephanie thank you Matthew and can I come to you now Susan briefly so what the Morgan Review didn't include was a comment about what the resources there were that would be required to do the kinds of things that she was commenting on and I think that's one of the key things for us now around this and I agree with Matthew I think if we are going to look at redefining education and we look at Hayward and Muir and all of those things that are there what we have now is a delay in change and we have a sticking point around a whole range of delays that then make it difficult for schools to move forward and to do it we do need to consider how we communicate effectively a changing view of the system and what's there the higher being the gold standard and the celebration of the the results to the detriment of any other qualifications or any other achievements that are out there in terms of secondary schools but also in our primary and early years setting is problematic and we haven't found as a country yet a way to go over the fact that that's what happens and so whenever we try to do something different around that we're always still going back to well higher's work for me so they should work for everybody they didn't work for everybody when they worked for me they didn't work for everybody we had young people when I was in school all those years ago who they didn't work for and they're still not working for everybody and we need to celebrate every single young person within our system but to do that we have to have the resource to do it you cannot expect a teacher in a secondary school to be able to deliver their subject in lots and lots of different ways without the proper time and space to do it multiple level classes just aren't working the way that people think they would at that stage and that's around the national qualifications that are supposed to be slightly similar but then if you try to introduce things that are off that then that's different again and it requires the space and time for teachers to get up to that and to consider it and we need that resource to do so that's all probably part of another education reform theme that we might be looking at later Mike, can I come to you and then I'm going to ask Stephanie if she's got anything she wants to answer on what she's heard so far again briefly we've touched on it but maybe we need to be looking at the terminology we use to try and get away from this sense of those with additional sport needs being different and being treated like a minority as others have said that kind of broader approach to recognising achievement is important and obviously there is work going on about that but it seems to have stalled for the moment but I think an important point that was in the Morgan review that we've not mentioned today is around career progression for additional support needs teachers and those in that area including for example the lead teacher there being an opportunity for someone to specialise as a lead teacher in additional support needs which is not there at the moment and I think also we've not touched on this much but there are bodies out there that are supposed to give more support to classroom teachers I'm thinking Education Scotland I'm thinking regional improvement collaboratives so they're supposed to give that support generally but they could and should be given that support in terms of potentially training resources etc in the sphere of additional support needs as well I think Stephanie Callaghan, have you got anything you want to pick up on in there? Thank you convener I kind of was trying to be earlier to become a bit more specific but I couldn't actually get through can I just ask as well then is this really about having wellbeing as being something central and I know that Susan was talking for example about schools that are assessed on hires, that are assessed on national fives and quite frankly as a parent and a parent of autistic children and young people I think quite a lot of parents are much more concerned about the wellbeing aspect of things and actually is that something that we should be looking at and we should be giving feedback to the community Peter, can you come in on that and do you want to respond as well Sylvia? Peter? Yeah, very much so and I think everyone around the tables already heard me banging on about curriculum developments on Haverd etc so you know my views on that what are schools for and how are we measured and as you mentioned league tables it's killing the system wellbeing, the problem with measuring wellbeing is that we don't have an agreed understanding of what wellbeing is I think if you were to ask 100 head teachers they would all give you quite different answers to be honest and then you multiply that through the teachers and the support staff and of course the parents, what do we mean by wellbeing it's a phrase we use all the time to understand it so we need a very consistent understanding of that term before we can start measuring it in first and foremost that's what we have to overcome once we do understand wellbeing and of course that is linked to mental health but it's also linked to desires to move forward with careers in life after school I think but not everyone agrees so my only answer to that is definitely I have to say is until we all agree a definition any measurement Sylvia go back to the first point on redefined education within mainstream we've all agreed we've got more children in society who are in mainstream schools with additional support need so children aren't able to function or be educated within the mainstream setting as in your typical class so more children are being educated out in corridors separate areas in cupboards in spaces that you can find within a school that's more adapted to their need so what we actually have now is 21st century children with 20th century teaching styles with 19th century in some cases buildings that are not suitable so yeah we absolutely do need to look and redefine education within Scotland can I come now to Pam Duncan-Clancy please thanks Pam thank you convener and good morning to the panel thank you for the information you've submitted in advance it's been hugely, hugely helpful if at times quite difficult reading because of the gravity of the situation we're seeing in our schools I want to pick up on the theme of reform and reviews my first question is really to say that we know there have been countless reviews that have looked into what we need to do here we've mentioned Morgan this morning there are plenty others what do the panel think of the barriers to implementing them Susan as I've said Pam I think that the key barrier at the moment is the underfunding of the reforms that have been put forward I think that the challenges face given the figures this morning and even more so in more detail in our submissions around this that have been implemented around supporting young people with additional support needs on the back of also an increase in the complexity of the support needs that we see in our schools so it's not just the cut on that as I've said earlier around that so what we really need is a long term sustainable funding plan around additional support needs that makes it something that can't just slip away is problematic as I said earlier can be charitable to local authorities and otherwise they can make the cuts because they can't make them in other places and nor should they but that's part of the problem here we have a situation where the predecessor to this group in 2017 acknowledged that there was a need to properly resource and to consider additional support needs so we've got successive different independent researchers saying there is a need for better resource and to properly organise around additional support needs there's predecessors of the parliament who have said the same thing over it but over time we've just not got that right we've not we see it as a area of cut but on top of that there's an increase in identification an increase in complexity of our young people who are there and as others have said the cuts also to other services so you've got the likes of CAMHS who would support our young people with mental health issues which is a growing area of additional support where the lowest waiting list as far as I can see is a five-year waiting list for young people to be seen in CAMHS so these are all different resources that others have said could support education in taking things forward if we were able to access those so it's resource Mike Corbett and Peter Bain please Yeah, as Susan has said it's finance resource it's more time for teachers which we've touched on it's access to effective training it's effective support from external agencies whether that's educational psychologists or education Scotland it's supportive changes in terms of education reform in the future but one that was touched on very early that I will just finish on is a level of honesty and trust I think because we certainly you'll see that in our submission we certainly have some members who feel that they're doing their absolute best and yet they still get blamed for doing enough or somehow it's their fault and so we need to get away from that culture of blame and be open and honest about what the challenges are if we're going to try and address them Thank you Mike, Peter Bain and then Sylvia is wanting in as well Yeah, obviously I agree with Susan resource resource, resource but equally at this particular time in education with the multitude of reforms and we've already talked about Muir and Haverd and Morgan and actually I would add that there are a number of reforms as well we don't know where we're going because we're sitting with multiple recommendations many of them are cross pollinated across all these reports that I've just mentioned and included in the original OECD work but we actually don't know which recommendations we're going to move to the next stage on and it would be my recommendation that we choose some forward direction of travel to put together some implementation groups if we take Hayward as an example in the SDA the Scottish Diplomate of Achievement which would give us a focus which would help redefine aspects of the curriculum and support within it because the SDA has component parts that helps with wellbeing and helps with inclusiveness etc if we actually knew we were going forward with even half the 26 Hayward recommendations and we started an implementation group for each of these we would have a better idea what level of support we're needing to put into 21st century education but at the moment we're looking at 20th century education as Sylvia says with an eye on 21st century education and we're sitting about so we don't know where we're going on that particular point and I know Sylvia is looking to comment on my original question on that point how important do you think the reforms that are suggested are to the ASN agenda I think they're crucial because if that is the new parameters of education and within that parameter education is a completely different qualification system within it having wellbeing components for example if we know that then we know that level of support that would be necessary to not just achieve the qualification of the SDA but to achieve the ideal sitting behind the SDA which is to have a more holistic appreciation of what education is all about and it's not just about the hires that's one of the three component parts of the SDA for example Sylvia? Well just to come back on the barriers I had met with support and it's great that we're all talking about the Angela Morgan review which happened about four years ago and I went to schools quite a lot and when asked about the Angela Morgan review very few people knew about it at least it is filtering down but it's very slowly getting there but I did speak to support staff in a whole in a group to talk about the Angela Morgan because it specifically looks at pupil support staff across Scotland and looking at 27 hours contracts in the remits so it's great there's a subgroup working on that but when I brought up the report and this one person had said and when you look at this there's multiple things and legislation on ASN presumption mainstreaming but she said what I don't need is more paperwork I don't need to look at any more paperwork I just need to have more people to help me to give me an understanding of how to do my job that's what it comes down to it's just people will need more resources more people instead of cutting not more paperwork to throw at when nothing happens out of it Pam Thank you and actually that brings me quite nicely on to my next question which I was going to ask yourself Sylvia, in the submission that you've given to committee one of the things you've said is that the Scottish Government's claim there are record numbers of additional learning support assistance in school should be interrogated can you tell me why that you feel that's the case and also explain a bit of the situation as you see it in schools Well what happens is is you'll have read the Bissar report and the support staff are more likely to be abused than anyone else within the school and that's because they are out of class with the most dysregulated behaviour child and they are working solely with them so if there's been an incident they want to report that incident if they are allowed to report the incident is one thing we encourage our members to report every incident from where you feel threatened or abused within your workplace report it but what our members feel is it's the blame as what Peter had said it's well what did you do what did you do to upset that child because they were fine before you came in what did you do and that's time and time again so when the blame culture comes in staff are less likely to want to report it because there's massive under recording massive people will say they are reporting it but that's if they're allowed if they're allowed to do it either shown how to do it debriefing debriefing is absolutely crucial and debriefing isn't about blame debriefing is about working out at that situation in time could we look to minimise that happening again from that instant it's not about well what were you doing where were you don't you be sitting there have you read that risk assessment nobody's seen a risk assessment so there's the blame culture so they do feel that they're being interrogated if they get interrogated that is because they're quite they don't get asked even how they are after an incident it's just back to class in you go thank you and I know that my colleague talked a little bit about some of the experiences you're describing around behaviour etc so if it's okay I'll speak I'll move specifically on to the point that you made just now about they're not necessarily getting sight of plans was it you said or information can you talk a little bit about that and what support staff need in order to be able to do the job appropriately well if your typical child comes into school and they don't display any distress or dysregulated behaviour they will not have a behaviour support plan they will not have a risk assessment they won't have any of that there but children more predominantly now are in society who display dysregulated and distressed behaviour but the support staff are not because either not seemed worthy now this is not across the board so headteachers sitting on this table don't take offence more often than not that information is not cascaded down to the support staff you're told you're going to work with the pupil who's on the artistic spectrum order you might be given information as they're a wee bit tricky so just be careful and that's all you're given that's as much as you know you're not given any whether they have a diagnosis or not it's about what does that child need that child will have a risk assessment that child will have a behaviour support plan and that is where you will have the developed strategies and coping mescanisms on how to work consistently with that child and you're not given access to that and we fight continually for our members to say go straight to the line manager and ask where is the risk assessment where is the behaviour support plan because I can't go back into that situation until I'm fully understanding of who I'm going to work with and what I need to keep me safe in my job and also to support that child within the school thank you Sylvia Pan I'm sorry I'm going to have to move on if that's okay Bill Kidd now please thank you very much convener and thank you to all our guests now you covered this earlier so but I think it's an important factor and it's about parental involvement and engagement and so I'm going to get two questions here but because you have covered a lot of this I'm going to put them together how are parents and carers of these pupils who are complex needs how are they encouraged to be involved in discussions about their children's education and what factors are required to ensure that this works well how do people work together in order to bring that and how are pupils informed about their rights to support and dispute resolution and legal remedies in terms of tribunals and such like if it goes that far but but how are parents first of all involved in their discussions about the education and if there are queries here and there how are parents informed about what to do next and where things can benefit their children most Susan first and then we'll look for others I think that in good practice it will be that schools will have developed positive relationships with parents to engage with them and to fully support them to make sure that they're well informed as well informed as the school can provide them they may signpost them to other areas of support if it's beyond what the school's advocacy side of things can be there can be in terms of the social work area in terms of disability act and work around that we can direct in those areas if there's a dispute then the local authorities will have processes in place for complaints to be made and for parents to engage in that and they'll be proved if a parent wants to raise a complaint then they'll be informed about what that local authorities process is in terms of complaints and in terms of move to tribunal or otherwise so there should be very clear in every local authority those kind of processes around it but in the first instance I would expect that schools would have developed and nuanced relationships with parents to make sure that they were able to support them the best they can that sometimes has to be to get to advocate or otherwise around it because it will go against the local authority but it would be that you would have those kind of nuanced areas one of the challenges around that can be where parents see themselves within the system and poverty and their positions can make that difficult if they already have put up barriers to to engage in with the school or otherwise because of their own personal experiences or otherwise it takes a bit more work to break those down and to try to get to to that side of things which is why we see higher levels of young people in poverty with some of the challenges more significant challenges not being addressed as quickly as we would want because we've got to guide our parents along a bit more and quotes them into those positions and that can be a barrier to it but I would expect that schools in the first instance would have developed those relationships and then provide them with the direction I'm not sure if they obviously want to be avoiding anything disputes and all that sort of thing so information about why their children are in whatever situation they are being in the educated in and a bit more involvement in maybe sort of bringing the parents and carers on board would avoid having to take things to that sort of advanced position I suppose schools can work with the parents minimises the dispute certainly around that area but the challenge will always be where it's a parent belief is that their young person should have a place in another provision and it's not the school's gift to give that provision that's a local authority decision we can only guide them to the areas and to give them the processes that are there and encourage them whatever we can I suppose Matthew is going to be taking over the seat anyway sorry carry on it's absolutely about relationships and communications with families and that's what pastoral care teams across Scotland are doing every day my day is made up of phone calls with families to find out what their needs are organising meetings, transition meetings, reviews ad hoc meetings with social work referrals to social work all of these things are happening all of the time from my point of view that's my job and that's the job of pastoral care teams is to find out what's going on and to be that person that is known to the family or residential house or whatever it might be that you can be a shoulder to cry on sometimes but as well as somebody that can get access for a translator or you know get access to school nurse or something like the school nurse team or something like that when it comes to tribunals and things it again goes back to the fact that there's an inequitable situation when there are families who are more equipped to be able to resort to access in their legal rights and it does mean that decisions that I might see happening in my work wouldn't be the most equitable that's just a fact of life and that's the job of schools is to work with that within the law obviously and to support those procedures but there are times when it is very challenging working with some families whose expectations and demands are inappropriate or unrealistic that's again that's a skill that pastoral care teams just get through the work that they do very helpful thank you very much indeed just a tiny point on the flip side of that what Susan said would be my answer but there's a tiny wee bit on the other side of that which is parents as much as we have a lot of parents who have high expectations and quite rightly for their own children equally we have a number of parents of significant number who refuse to accept that their young people are children have any issue despite them clearly having a number of issues that impact on themselves and their fellow classmates and the teaching staff and the ASNs staff that we have to put into place despite the fact that parents refuse to accept that there is any need they will refuse to have any lovely diagnosis they will refuse for the child to have a discussion with an educational psychologist a health professional, a social worker anybody they will dig their heels in and say my kids normal put them in a class and they'll get on with and there is a significant number of them and because we can't get them in front of a professional from out with the school we are unable to access a level of support of that child the person deserves because the parent just refuses to accept that and there is a fair few of them and the impact on the wider school community can be significant as well because of that, it's just a wee extra thing that we should be aware of with regard to parents it's very useful to know, thank you thank you Bill Kidd and thank you for that closing remark Peter so I'd like to thank everyone the witnesses for their evidence this morning we could have gone on for much longer as you could sense from here evidence on this inquiry later this month and at our meetings in early March and we'll then produce rather a report based on what we've heard with recommendations for the Scottish Government so this concludes our public part of our proceedings today and I suspend the meeting to allow our witnesses to leave thank you very much the committee will then move into private session thank you