 Awesome, so I guess we got started then. So hi everyone, I'm Ben Grant. I'm the MSYP for Perthshire North, and I'm also the convener of the Education and Lifelong Learning Committee within the Scottish Youth Parliament. And obviously as you can guess, my remit is education. So yeah, should we just... Hi everyone, my name is Dana Badele. I am the MSYP for Glasgow Southside, and I'm the deputy convener for the Equalities and Human Rights Committee and Equalities as well. Hi everyone, I'm Bruce. I'm the Children and Young People's Commissioner of Scotland. I always describe it as the best job in the world because it's my job to promote and safeguard the rights of the over a million children and young people all across Scotland. When I first got the job, I travelled around the country and asked children what they wanted from me, and they told me all sorts of amazing things. But one of them, one of the things that I love is up in Shetland, they told me they wanted me to be savage in holding those in power to account. I think it's the kind of Viking heritage up there. So that's kind of fed into my strategic planning and it's jobs very much around accountability. And so I think that the focus of this panel is really dear to my heart in terms of looking at the purpose of education and the failures of government at all levels to ensure that we're actually taking a rights-based approach. It's been evidenced so well in this film and this project and this discussion. So looking forward to the discussion. I'm Laura Lundy. Most of you know me. I'm a professor of children's rights at Queen's, Belfast and in Cork. But I would just send in here, is that what you probably don't know about me is that I qualified as a barrister and I ran a law clinic and I got into children's rights via education law. I wrote to the toilet so that I started, that was my route was domestic education law. I wrote the first textbook in it in Northern Ireland and it is Byzantine. It is educational, it's so complex and it's hard enough for lawyers but it's impossible for parents. And I think it's a good exclusion, suspension or what we call special educational needs or you call it additional needs. It is so complex. It's great we have people like you. Hi, my name is Ian Nisbet. I am an education law solicitor and I work mostly with families, with children who have either disabilities or additional support needs. I also am part of a national project called My Rights May Say which provides direct support and representation to children with additional support needs aged 12 to 15 in terms of exercising and enforcing their rights under that legislation. And some of the time, more often than is healthy, I think that casework involves children who have been excluded from school either formally or informally. Fabulous, right. Well, Laura said to me that one of the things she really wanted out this afternoon was a bit more engagement from the floor. So there's your challenge. If there are things that the panel are talking about that you're really interested in or that you've got really good examples and I think what today has shown us is that there's a real power in those kind of like really practical examples. Please put your hand up, I'll kind of like keep an eye more on this side of the room than this side of the room and like if you want to talk, just shout. Okay, so first question. Okay, so children report being informally excluded or being taken off the school roll. There are no statistics for this in education. To what extent do you feel children are excluded using these methods, particularly those nearing 16 or over and what impacts does this sort of inclusion have? Yeah, so it happens quite a lot, I think, is my impression. And as you say, it's not then recorded in statistics. Sometimes the Education Authority head office don't even know that this has happened. It's just sort of taking place at a school level. So the exclusion statistics that come out then are really, can be misleading, I think, under reporting what the guidance says very clearly should be counted as exclusions. I think recently there was a report on the exclusion statistics that only one child in the whole of Scotland was permanently excluded from a school in the whole of that particular reporting year, which is just nonsense. And what Education Authorities have done is they've kind of taken a leaf from the Independent Schools playbook where they just sort of have a quiet word with people and expect them to leave with their own accord. And that's what you see. And you get all sorts of euphemisms that people use. It's dealing with a child aged 15 in foster placement and she was told to leave school and to not come back to her school. And we challenged that and we said to the local authority that that was an exclusion and they disagreed even all the way up to the tribunal and they were insisting that it wasn't an exclusion even though very clearly they were saying that she couldn't come back to school and that if she tried to, that they might call the police. And they described it as having relocated her educational opportunities off campus, which is almost Orwellian in its attempts there. And I think it's a really big problem. I think the point made in the question as well about those who are approaching the age of 16 can often be given a really big hint that their educational opportunities lie elsewhere. And often young people, parents don't know that they can insist on staying at school and that's something that comes up. May, June time every year we'll get inquiries about that sort of thing. And I think a lot of headteachers genuinely believe that once you're at the age of 16 that you can just be sharing the door, which is not the case. This is quite a big issue in the research project I mentioned that we're doing within the Four Nations and it's everywhere. And from a rights perspective, it really frustrates and angers me because once you do that, the child's just given the impression you've lost all access to legal entitlement unless you know you can get to A and you know, if you're dismissed, there's an appeal process, there's accountability. If you're just told not to come back or given you lose all those rights that go with the formal process. But I've been kind of coming up with this term of constructive exclusion. There's a thing called constructive dismissal and that's not when you're sacked. It's when the situation is so bad you walk out, you know? And there's a constructive exclusion. I think quite often what's happening is school is made so intolerable for some young people that they don't turn up. You know, and that's when the school isn't even doing the off-rolling thing. It's just making it and then there's someone, they didn't come back, we can't make them and they don't care at this age because the Education Welfare Service isn't going to push for attendance. So there's kind of all sorts of practices that are really gray and deny young people their normal procedural rights to challenge you. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting issue, isn't it? Because it's like, how do you challenge something that technically, you know, according to the government, isn't there? I suppose it comes back to what we were talking about earlier about accountability. How do we account for the fact that the kids are affected by just going missing, you know? How do you challenge these behaviours? It becomes a really difficult topic. I think, obviously, if you're excluding from someone from school, informally or formally, you are taking them out of education. Where did they go after that? I mean, yes, you might argue some might go into apprenticeship, some might go into, you know, other employment, but what happens to the large number of people who just completely drop off the radar and end up with very little to nothing and it's like, what do you do in that situation? It's been really well covered. We're supposed to be doing a bit of audience participation, so I'm going to jump in with some of that. And so, ask you all in the audience. So the methodology we'll use is, for those of you that are able to stand, if you can stand up. And the question is, how big an issue do you think this is in your local authority area? And if you think it's a huge, huge issue, put your hand up, like, stretch up as tall as you can get. And if you think it's not really an issue right down to the floor. So everyone stand up, and so far as you're able to. And then given, as Ian said, the national statistics say this isn't a problem, because we don't have statistics, but in your local authority area, how big an issue do you think that it is? So we're getting lots of hands up to the sky. Is anyone a bit lower? So, yep, so there's, okay, we're up there. So, go, go, go. Okay, you can pick either or both. So one of them's amazing, and one of them's awful. Yeah, yeah, I genuinely, I love an East Drain, and I don't think there's a big, awful, I believe it happens, but not massively. I think in Glasgow, I formerly worked in youth justice, and I actually had to weave up a question for Laura, but I don't want to deal with this if you want to come back after you've done your thing. We'll come back to you with the question. And so there's some big hands reaching to the sky up here. So which, where are you from, if you're happy saying that? And Falkirk, to pick it up. All right, so basically in my community that I work in, there's a population of about 800 people, and we already have identified six individuals that are not in education. Yeah, so that's huge percentage-wise, isn't it? Anyone else who is really high or really low that wants to, yep. Sorry, I've taken over the chairing. So I work in Edinburgh, and we have, we work on projects with young people who are not attending school. We ran a project for the Gypsy Traveller community where they're not formally excluded, but school becomes impossible for them. They leave at 12, 13, and there's very little provision, very little help for them, there's very little literacy support for them, so there's nothing for them to do, really. Brilliant, thanks everyone. Okay, you can sit down, I'm gonna make you do that again, so just that you're aware and we'll get some exercise. Just in terms of my reflections on it, I think the point on the data's really important, the point that Ian made earlier, we need to make sure that this is properly recorded in order to ensure we know what's happening and we don't at the moment. That's actually a recommendation we've put forward to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child as part of the review of Scotland and the UK to make sure there's a really clear recommendation that we've got clear data, but the second part of the question, I think, is really interesting in terms of what's the impact of being excluded even on a temporary basis? And from a rights perspective, that this is really important because not only is there a right to education, but the Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the purpose of education and it's this holistic idea of developing children to their fullest potential. It's not just about passing exams, but it's about developing all of you so that you can be fully engaging in your community, understanding who you are, understanding the natural environment. So much of education isn't just about passing exams, it's about developing you to your fullest potential and so when you're excluded from the state obligation to do that, that's really problematic. And actually, and again, as Ian mentioned, we've got a domestic legal framework that says you're entitled to this and a right to it. And again, even post-16, there's really clear commitment to ensure that you show what the educational pathway is for those that aren't in the formal schooling system. And so that state failure, going back to the discussion that we had in the previous panel, it's really important that we see this as a rights issue and a failure of the state to deliver on that promise to children and young people of having that right to education and being able to fulfill that in the way that best suits the child's needs and the involvement of that child in helping to design that's absolutely essential and the impact of it, of that failure of the state, flows really strongly through into physical and mental health, into the way in which you engage with society, kind of socialization, association, all of those other things, right to recreation, rest and players, or LinkedIn, if you're excluded from the formal systems and there's not other systems put in place to support you, that has a catastrophic effect on children and young people at the time, but also can be lifelong. And so I think that second part of it is really important in terms of the impact is absolutely profound. And we need to see this as a failure of the state to deliver on a really clear obligation in rights terms and within domestic law as well. In regards to the first part of the question and how often it happens, I think it happens a lot of times, especially in regards to things like league tables, how many A's does our school get, you know? So it's gotten to the point where schools don't care about the pupils anymore, to just care about, you know, getting that high rate in. So it happens a lot. So it gets to the point where you're like 16 and then you're already starting to be told like, oh, I don't think you would do higher's leave, you become a hairdresser or go into apprenticeships, you know, et cetera. And how this affects us is, you start to feel like but burdens, you know what I mean? It's like, I feel like they don't realize it has this domino effect. If, for example, my friend was told, I feel like you're really, okay, yeah, okay. I think you're really dumb, I think you should become a hairdresser. I was starting to get, the microphone hates me, don't I? I was starting to get rather apathetic because my friend has been told this, you know what I mean? My attitude would change. So she's left school now because of what the school has told her. I start to change and then I'm told to leave school and then my other friends start to change and they're told to leave school. Now this school doesn't exist anymore. All we care about is the league tables, all we care about is our A's and everything. And aside from the technicality, it's like, where's the humanity? It's like the schools need to be reformed, like entirety, you need training all over again because if we as young people are put in your care, you're my teacher, you're my head teacher, I'm put in your care because they believe you're responsible enough, you know, to be socially aware about the things you say, about how you behave towards me. If you lack that, you should be removed. You need training all over again. So they need to realize the domino effect. They need to realize that humanity plays a very, very important aspect in this. And that's it. Yeah, I totally agree, Zainab. I mean, something I've just been thinking about there. It's like, what kind of a tone does this set? It's like, if you're being kicked out of school, it's like, usually the people who are informally-schooled are people who aren't, you know, doing very well academically. They have, you know, whatever issues in their own lives that are, you know, they're struggling to resolve and could ideally do with some support with. It's the people that the school is basically saying, we don't want to deal with you, it's your issue now, off you go. So again, why are we accepting this culture as it is? It's completely toxic. And as Zainab says about the league tables, it's like, I mean, this whole thing is driven about schools' reputation and league tables and performance. And it's like, we're all hooked on this idea of successful learners and the quick and for excellence and getting your hires and advanced hires and so on. But what about social skills and the meta skills? What about the things, you know, for example, I do some part-time work with children who have additional support needs, autism, and so on. And for some of them, being able to maintain eye contact is a massive, massive achievement. They might never get an advanced hire in physics or modern studies or whatever, but for them, that is a huge achievement. And by kicking people who may be struggling in a mainstream education system out of school, you're effectively saying, you're not good enough, we don't want you in this society, off you go. It's your problem. And I find that just totally disgusting. And I'm sure most of you here, if not all of you here will agree with that. So yeah, I mean, it's totally wrong. And I thought, obviously, we're talking about informal exclusions and being excluded from the actual building and education. But I think it's also important to acknowledge the situation within schools, people who are still in school, being told, oh no, you can't do that hire because you've not met certain grades or you can't do this and you can't do that hire. And it's like, who are you to say that I can't achieve this out of the next thing? And it's like, just because you didn't do NAT5 doesn't mean you can't do a hire. There might have been some situation in your home life or in other parts of your own existence that have impacted your ability to perform at a NAT5 level. I mean this, again, goes to test fires why our own exam system doesn't work, if nothing else. But it's like, just because you've not got a certain grade doesn't mean you can't go on to be really successful. So it's time we stopped judging people based on academic grades and school performance but rather on their ability to function society and their ability to empathize with others, their ability to communicate. I mean, these are such important skills that I feel that we just totally neglect in mainstream education at the moment. So yeah, I thought, yeah, there, here you go. I think this is a real, sorry, we're diverting a wee bit from the questions but I think this is a really important point in terms of coming back to the purpose of education. And I think it's interesting when you talk to business and community in terms of what they want in terms of being able to be really productive in terms of building society. It's about problem solving, it's about team working, it's about all of the soft skills that we don't measure very well within the education system, we don't value. Who are the children in our school communities who are the kind of peacemakers and problem solvers and who are the ones that are really caring because those are actually the skills that we really need in society. And the purpose of education set out in Article 29 actually speaks to that. It's about developing the skills to allow you to work in a society. And I think that the education system doesn't actually focus in value on those things. And in Scotland at the moment, we've got a review of education. And I think, again, without diverting us too much, I think that would be an interesting point to discuss because I know that the pair of you have got a lot to say on this but we've got an opportunity at the moment where the purpose of education is being, and structures of education is being reviewed, but I'm not really sure how many young people and particularly those who aren't having positive experience with education are involved in that. So without diverting too much from the questions, I'd love to hear a bit more about that. I just wanted to say it was regarding examples, right? You know, Ben was talking about like, what makes you think you can tell me I can't do this and that. I currently study law in Dean Russell Dundee and I met this guy. And I was like, going back to Glasgow because I live in Glasgow. And I was like, oh, you live in Glasgow as well? And I'm like, and he's like, yeah. His school was literally like five minutes away from my house. I'm like, wow, what a small world. And he was like, yeah, do you know how he got excluded from school? I'm like, you're here studying law. And he was like, yeah, because I went home, studied on my own, went into the exams and aced it. And he was like, I intentionally went back to my school, told my teacher, yeah, I'm going to Dean now to do law and they were all irritated and they were all angry. And I was like, if he can do it on his own, the education system has failed. If he can just say, you guys are telling me, I can't do this, I can't do that. And I can go on my own and do this and get into law, the education system has failed. And I was like, I'm really proud of you for not letting them, you know, drown your, you know, your ambition. He knows I was just like, no one's dumb, no one's dumb. Anyone can become anything they want to become and he is a solid example of that. Yeah, again, I've no people similar to that. Zaynab, you know, I think we've all got examples of that in our own lives. Obviously, Bruce, you're answering there about the national discussion and, you know, how young people are getting involved in reform in general. I think the government is trying to involve young people. I mean, certainly like Zaynab and I, obviously independent of the government in this, but we're on the exam reform with Louise Hayward. Obviously, myself and Sophie, we go to the Scottish Education Council meetings. So we are moving in the right direction. I think, you know, things are progressing. But in terms of our wider participation of young people within reform, within politics, within our society, I think we're still really lacking in that area and there's a lot more we could be doing to include young people, not just MSYPs, but, you know, those seldom heard voices, people who are marginalized, people who are told, you can't do this. And yeah, I think, obviously, there's no one size fits all. We can't just put out a survey and that'll suit everybody. We can't just do focus groups and that'll suit everybody. I think we need to try and use every medium possible to try and get across how important this actually is. And we really want to try and bring in all these views from every diverse group and, you know, setting in our society. And that is some monumental task, I have to admit, but it's a task worthwhile. And like I say, and actually, as I mentioned to you earlier, I think we're at such an important juncture in Scottish education whereby COVID has exacerbated so many issues that already existed in our education system and so many more people have become aware of these issues. And I think now that we have this opportunity where people, they have their eyes open, I think we now, it's the time to get this right and really drive forward that change, really push out the fact that, you know, we're having this national discussion, we're doing this exam reform. What do you think? And really try and get the country involved, which I don't feel like we're quite getting at the moment. And obviously there's fatigue, I think, at the moment. People really think that if we don't fix this now, if we don't get these reforms through now, if we don't get the voices heard now, I think we're gonna be really struggling in the future to continue this work. It is a bit of a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear. People are getting fed up of reforms that actually are just a rebranding of the same old, same old. And what we really need to do is make sure, via whatever means necessary, that we are bringing these voices into the fold and we are making the reforms that are needed. Whether people like it or not, you know, is we have to be blunt about it, we have to be say, this is not good enough, this needs to change, and the status quo just isn't good enough. Is that answer here? Yeah, sorry. Just wanna say, I mean, the reason we're all here today is this film, Excluded, you know, and it does it really powerfully. You know, it captures the young people who don't get heard, shows their experience, shows how they ended up excluded of what they were feeling, what they were experiencing, and you can't watch it if you haven't already seen it, you're gonna be blown away by it, you know, and it's really, there are ways of doing this and this is brilliant, this is a brilliant example of it. Kind of slightly different theme because I think it is, I think you're absolutely right about value and you know, which skills do we value? But one of the things that I've been working on lately and I'm really curious in the room is whether this happens in Scotland. From a rights perspective is this idea about, you know, when children are disruptive and they get put out for mild disruption, you know, whatever, behavioral issues over time and they're put out in different ways, maybe the frozen out thing and it's the rights of the other 29 issue, you know, and it's such a fault, and it's a really false version of human rights law that this child is interfering with the rights of the other 29 to an effective education and I've written about this and I feel really passionate about it so just remember, I've got an audience to say something. It's wrong because often what is happening is they say it's the right of this child versus the right of the other 29, the right of this child of education to the right of the other 29 but actually what's happening with this individual child who's disruptive probably is a breach of their rights. Something has gone wrong when they are not being delivered the conditions where they can have it in meaningful, usually inclusive because usually there's additional support needs involved that are not being met, that are creating these conditions so I could talk all day and I'm not going to but you work on these issues. What was the question? The question is about do you find that the schools are telling them that they're too disruptive? You're ruining the education they do, yeah? Yeah, so I mean that is occasionally an issue and obviously the ground for exclusion is phrased in those terms so it's, you know, the continued dependence of the child would be seriously disruptive to order and discipline or the educational well-being of the other pupils so the way the law is set up is specifically couched in those terms and so I guess that encourages that kind of thinking that the most recent example of that in terms of a case and an authority formally pleading that was actually in terms of a restraint case and they were saying, well, you know that the rights of the other children in the class compelled us to assault this pupil for one of a better phrase and that that was seen as much sort of justification as was needed rather than, as you say, looking back to, well, how did we get to that situation? Were there safeguards that are in place? Were there support mechanisms and so on? That's a bigger conversation. We've got somebody here who's going to say something unless Bruce wants to leap in or... I was going to come on restraint and seclusion but if you've got a point on the same point... It's kind of on the same point, yeah. Hi, I'm Julie and my colleague Janine down here, we both work for Education Scotland and part of our role is around children's rights and delivering professional learning to teachers and educators and practitioners in different settings around articles and how to embed them and quite often, I'd say, I have questions come in from teachers about putting children outside of the classroom and it's that exact thing that you're saying, the teachers are saying, but we have these other kids and if I had a parent every time, I'd be really rich and I just think this is my opportunity to ask the real experts. I know how I kind of describe my reply in the training sessions but this is my opportunity to ask you how to frame that kind of answer because we know it's not right but we still get the questions very, very often and I just think that it's really powerful for me to be able to kind of give your response back when those questions do inevitably come up. I think that that's a really important point in terms of those that are working within four children, young people, in education settings. The blame shouldn't sit with them, I suppose. We need to avoid getting into the situation where saying the fault is to do with teachers rather than saying there's a systemic failure here that if you don't have the resources and support and guidance in order to ensure that all children's rights are fulfilled, then that's a problem that's up the chain and we've always been really clear in the work that we've done that this isn't about blaming kind of individual teachers or teaching assistants or others, this is about saying there's been a problem here in terms of resourcing, support and guidance and so my office, the first legal investigation we did was into restraints and seclusion to pick up on exactly this point where children are communicating their distress and the teachers and support staff around them don't have the resources, skills and training to properly address that and so they take an action which breaches children's rights by restraining or secluding them and which in many cases is a criminal matter in terms of assault but also it's a denial of their rights in terms of education, in terms of socialization and also their personal autonomy and so there's huge problems here but the response to it is to focus on the state obligation in this case the Scottish government's obligation to set in place really clear guidelines to make sure that there's proper training and support in place and to put that on a statutory basis and for local authorities to make sure that there's proper support in place and so I suppose the question that I would put back to those teachers is saying well why did you feel that that was the last resort? So you should only be doing that on a proportionate basis so you're denying a child their right to education and again without moving into restraints or seclusion but you're denying a child a right to education you should only do that if it's the last resort you've tried everything else and it should be for the minimum time possible and it's proportionate and so what stopped you doing all of the other things that you want to do no one wants to put a child outside that child's communicating their distress no child wants to be excluded either so there's a lot going on there what's stopping you from taking a more right-spaced approach to be able to support that child to communicate with them to understand what's going on and if the problem is resourcing that you're one teacher and you've got 30 kids 30 kids plus and there's a lot of distress being communicated across your class a right-spaced approach is going to go back and say right there's a resourcing issue here we need more support in place so that we've got the time to build those trusted relationships with children to understand what's going on and I think that the incorporation of the convention on the rights of the child which is coming very soon in Scotland is going to be really key to that because actually a lot of the time this is about budgets it's about making sure that there's finance in place to ensure that staffing levels are high enough that training and support are there because no teacher or teaching assistant wants to be in a situation where you've got a child who's incredibly distressed and your only option is or the only option as you see it is to exclude them so we need to really rethink that and human rights and the incorporation of the CRC is a really useful tool to talk about kind of the use of available resources and human rights-based budgeting to make sure that we've got resources into schools and education settings to make sure that supports there so I suppose, sorry that was really long-winded but I suppose it would be going back to ask that question it's like how do we end up in this situation where we thought that the only available recourse was to exclude a child and so the problem started a long way before that the problem started in terms of the failure to properly support that child to engage with education sorry, that was... Thank you for that obviously again we've all got our own experiences from school, I think you rightly say it's a resourcing issue there are, you know schools are horrifically underfunded and the funding varies between local authorities and school districts and so on I was one of those disruptive kids I was excluded from school and you know, I'm not being funny the problem typically starts when the school fails to recognise there's an issue and it's not necessarily an academic issue or a sport for learning issue sometimes it's a social issue or there's something going on your own life that you know, a whole plethora of different potential problems that could arise but the problems start it's when the school doesn't recognise there's an issue and it festers and it goes on and on and on and on and you're continually shut down and told behave shut up, be quiet do your work and it's like again and again you're not addressing the actual issue and then sometimes these flare-ups in class where kids get disruptive they can be stopped before they even happen and all it would take is a five minute sit-down with the kid what's going on, how's your day going you know, how can we help and then sometimes you might get a scenario where they start bawling their eyes out, crying you know, the whole story comes slight and the school can deal with it and it doesn't have to be a massive issue but when schools don't recognise there's a problem and then fail to acknowledge the problem when it does arise and it does things like internal exclusions informal exclusions, the tensions and so on they're just repressing the kids and in an ideal world there would be the funding there would be the resources to reduce class sizes to say, you know, 15 per teacher at most where, you know, students could have a better relationship with their teachers, more one-on-one and it is a bit of a difficult situation we're in and obviously you mentioned teacher training as well teachers get a lot of training, as it is but is it the right training and is it getting across properly because you can say, yeah, we need to give teachers more training on, digital support needs to give them more training on socioeconomic issues that have arised in the local community and so on and so forth but are we really getting the message across because you can send someone to a one-hour seminar but is anything going in? I don't know, maybe so, you know, I think we have to look long and hard and not only the way we're treating kids who are disruptive but the way the schools are handling situations before they arise, after they arise because you don't need resources as such to recognise an issue you don't need resources to have a five-minute chat with a kid to say, are you okay? You know, that is just intuition and a bit of experience and a bit of skill and, you know, we have to have a long hard look at how schools are dealing with situations and how we're actually training teachers in the first place I think that's probably a good place to leave that. I'm not going to, that's been a long answer and there's so many questions but I've written with Jenny Gilt-Swan who's an academic in Australia and a teacher, a framework for working your way through the rights and I'm not going to do the lecture I can share it with you and it is a bit, you know, we've been talking about it's working through what are the actual rights at stake but the bit I want to mention is our second element is compromise, you know, because it's the flexibility to compromise and not make, you know, the child sit or go through it definitely listening I really totally agree with you Ben, that's the first thing but after that what can you actually do to manage and I've seen this incredible system I examined a PhD, women's actually just taken over a school for children with additional needs in Dublin I noticed on social media and she'll be amazing and she devised a system in a school for children who just were not, you know, were really demonstrating disruptive behaviour and it was almost a bit like who wants to be a millionaire kind of like phone a friend, get out you could use these passes to just let the steam off it wasn't going and putting them in an exclusion room and sitting in between walls and getting more bored it was just ways devised with young people where they could leave they could leave and do something else and come back, you know and schools aren't really set up for that but this should be and you can set those systems up with young people if you choose to this woman Paula Flynn devised that and it was a really excellent system This is what happens when you say that you want more engagement you start getting lots of people leaping in I forgot hands, it's hard to see with them Oh I see you've got, you know so we've got two people here My name's Kerry Watson and I'm the manager of a project called Keeping Families Together which works with young people in secure care across Scotland so we work across the whole five secure care centres and I would say that the impact relating back to the question is that young people start to come and contact with the justice system if they're not in school if things like you know diversity is not picked up at that early age we exclude children and so when you talk about disruptive I would say distressed not disruptive and it's about people recognising the difference between a distressed child and a disruptive and the impact is terrible because then it goes back to what Betty was talking about and the trajectory that they're on is they're going to be being excluded to the prison and that's real and it's here and it's now in any time in Scotland we've got 84 children in secure care now they've all been excluded for education and they've gone to another system of education that their educational background doesn't follow them and it's secure so we've got a problem there and then they come back to community without proper care plans and if you had a proper care plan we would know that this child is displaying issues that we would think are probably neurodiverged so therefore mainstream education is not going to do them and we send them back in and again they become disruptive or they recognise their behaviour is disruptive it's distressed so I think if we could recognise that at a very early age then we could stop these young people going into secure care in the very first place and hopefully they could reach brilliant potential because having a neurodiverse condition doesn't mean you can't flourish Lewis Capaldi is a perfect example of that so I think we just should recognise that as distressed behaviour You want to go first? Yeah, those are some fantastic points you've raised and you're totally right and again it comes back to Betty and the work you've been doing around the exclusion to prison pipeline and it totally is that I think the interesting thing I was just thinking there I remember having a conversation a few months ago and it was about the socialisation effect on young people from being excluded and it's like by being shut down sent out of classes shouted out by teachers ignored what you're actually doing is you're not dealing with that situation you're actually socialising them to think that their behaviour and their feelings aren't valid and that in itself is even more damaging than potentially even the exclusion itself because that mentality stays with them forever you know, the primary and secondary socialisations you receive from your parents, your early years, nursery primary, secondary that is the biggest impact ever on a person's life you know, and to get that wrong is horrifically bad you know, if you mess that up then you may as well sign off the prison papers already because you know, it's like you're condemning them to a life where they don't feel valued and they don't feel represented they don't feel understood and they spend their life feeling frustrated and angry and upset at the system and a situation that could have been completely avoided in the first place if the resources and the system was built to recognise the issues and deal with them in the first place yeah, sorry, it was another question Thanks, it was just a point really it was really for Education Scotland I'm Amanda Corrigan and I'm from the University of Strathclyde where we have lots of people who come to learn to be teachers or teachers who come back for more education and I'm actually working with teachers tomorrow to talk about exclusion so let me just stand in the gap for the teachers and say from their perspective when they say I have been hit, I have been spat on, I have been punched somebody threw a chair, we've got seven bells in the school that ring so that we all stay in our classroom with the door locked because there's a child now in the corridor and we can't let other children out there and I think perspectives Education Scotland is the thing that I would say that's what I'm doing with the teachers tomorrow getting them to think about situations from the perspective of the child from their own perspective and their own perspective being valid that it's alright to say sometimes I'm scared of these children I don't want to be bit at my work I don't want somebody to throw a chair at me when I'm at my work and all of that being valid but also for everyone to understand that there's one pie in the school it's one pie and if we take the five minutes off to have a chat with that child then it's a five minutes that we've lost from something else or we take a classroom assistant, we put them in that place then we've used the money in a classroom assistant that we don't have for something else so what we all know in the room is the resourcing isn't there and we can talk about the different people's perspectives and complain from their perspective that doesn't move anybody on we all have conversations complaining from the perspective of the person who's most upset about the thing how can we start to move people on how can we start to think about things that we could do or change our mindset and one of the things that I do with teachers is explain some of the things that you're talking about today let me tell you what can happen when a child is excluded from school and lots of teachers will say I didn't really realise that I knew that they were out of the classroom now I can teach and I've got peace but I didn't realise that once they were in that pupil referral unit or the extended outreach whatever it's called that they would never get back into mainstream so trying to get them to understand because one final thing for everybody here teachers are often the person that gets to open the can of Coca-Cola so the can of Coca-Cola is a child and the child goes home and there's no dinner so the can of Coca-Cola gets shaken and then there's fighting in the house at night and the child gets hit and mum and dad are fighting the can's getting shaken, the can's getting shaken they're getting up in the morning because they haven't been able to sleep because there's so much kiosk in the house and the can gets shaken no breakfast go into school and they're in a bad mood and the teacher says come on now and you come into the class we need to get started and they open the can and the can it goes all over the place none of that was the teachers doing but the teachers to fix the issue and we need to have people in these national discussions Bruce, we need people in the resource meetings talking about that can opening and they'll layer upon layer upon layer upon layer that led to the can being too fizzy to be able to cope because we're all in here with the best of intentions but the problem is resource and an eye's not been in the right place your point about all of the A's and everybody wanting an A and everybody getting to university very good where is the money in education going it's going into the RICs it's going into high up organisation that's not at grassroots that would do all the things that you want so now I'm coming down off my soapbox and I'm happy to have a wee chat with you at the end but here to the teachers that we need to be able to fix this who need to be on our side with that and we need to understand that because I don't want to be bitten when I go to my work either or spat on or whatever so thank you very much no that was a wonderful example thank you for that would any of yous like to speak on let's get on to question two we'll go on to question two all right, okay there's a lot of sneaky multiple layer questions in this school exclusion one so people are getting like three questions in at once so don't feel like you've got to answer all of it maybe pick the bit that you're interested in research shows that children in deprived areas are more likely to be excluded have limited subject choice are less likely to stay on at school post 16 with many reporting that actively discourage from staying on what do you think we can do about this how do we increase support and advocacy and how do we understand the extent of the problem does anyone just like to start us off do we want to ask the audience in terms of what they think yeah if anyone from the floor wants to answer oh there we go I was wondering about getting people to stand up again and think oh yeah how big a problem is this in your your local authority do you think so I suppose if we're talking about the link it's a big question the link between poverty sorry Bruce can you use the microphone sorry sorry so we're looking at the link between poverty and exclusion I think around this but so again if everyone could stand up and how big so do you think in your local authority that this is a kind of huge issue or actually it's not so much of an issue or so lots of high who's got the lowest hand in the room who's got the lowest hand in the room anyone anyone wants to kind of so nobody's doing this well I think we all acknowledge that your middle well the reason I'm middleing is because birthshare is typically quite an affluent area and a lot of respect so I think when it comes to the deprived sorry I'll sit down again when it comes to the deprived areas and subjects I think a lot of people in birthshare are really quite lucky in some regards because parents and certainly in my own school because it is such an affluent area get tutors and things like that so I mean a lot of these issues somehow get avoided and obviously this speaks to the issue of the poverty-related attainment gap and other issues around inequality but I think from my own area it's not as big of an issue as it could be but where I grew up I'm not originally from birthshare I'm actually from Fife so where I'm originally from I think it's a much bigger issue because there's a lot more poverty there's a greater proportion of social economic issues within the community and there's a lot of great emphasis on doing things like English and maths as opposed to getting to do more things like drama and so on and I think it's obviously like I say birthshare is just a bit lucky in that regard but it's definitely an issue in Scotland when I started this job five and a half years ago and travelled around the country and asked children and young people what the biggest issues were poverty came through as the number one issue and that was pre-COVID pre-the current escalation and the cost of living so poverty's always been a significant human rights issue in Scotland and we know that poverty directly impacts children's experience of their rights in every aspect in terms of education and the ability to be involved in community mental and physical health the links to the criminal justice system as well it was actually the topic of the National Youth Work Conference yesterday that I was at here in Glasgow and this really strong focus about the role of youth work alongside the education system and I think that we need to see poverty as a human rights issue and we need to take a human rights based response to that in terms of the discussions that we're having around addressing the huge impact that poverty has and really addressing the root causes of poverty and recognising the obligation on the government to address that and again it's been said many times that allowing poverty to continue is a political failure it's a political choice and we really need to reframe the discussion around poverty as something that can be addressed by government to exclusion but it also links very very closely to poor mental health links very very closely to engagement in the criminal justice system as well and so I think that addressing poverty as a human rights issue is absolutely essential and that connection to education is really strong we all know the statistics on this so the Scottish Government guidance outlines very clearly the catastrophic detrimental effects that exclusion has on pupils we know from our own exclusion statistics that exclusion is disproportionately targeted at pupils from the lower SIMD percentiles looked after children children with additional support needs and disabilities male pupils over female pupils and we know from the research including Professor Gillian McCluskey from the University of Edinburgh that exclusion doesn't work it doesn't do any of the things that we hope it might do it doesn't improve behaviour it doesn't really help relations with the school and in many cases it actually exacerbates those problems so why are we still doing it is the question there and I think if we think back to some of the I think somebody said already all behaviour is communication actually we can see this as a kind of communication and that schools who are struggling with pupils almost becomes a kind of coded form of communication with head office and so rather than having a sensible conversation about resourcing and mainstreaming and appropriate placements and appropriate supports this is what we do instead because it's the thing that is available and it's what we do when there's a serious incident rather than there being any beneficial use to it I think actually if we get beyond that into having the kind of conversations that we want to have which is how can we get this child into a place where this behaviour is not happening and they're being appropriately supported and so on that actually the need for exclusion then would diminish In regards to the first question what do you think can be done about what I was going to say was that going to different schools so if we could put a scheme for example in place where schools collaborate I think it kind of exists but it's not official so if it becomes more official where if the school has no resource to offer so and so hires then we could go to so and so school and then again it could be in a small area where there are not many schools it could be just that one school so that's where I don't know if people have heard of this yeah it's East school basically and it was created for the students in the highlands and islands who couldn't come to like because of the travel and everything so if that could be kind of extended to the schools that cannot offer the the hires and whatever then I feel like that would be like a really great solution to that and then how to we increase support and advocacy I feel like we just need people in the higher places to see you know what's going on because I feel like when we have a lot of consultations and things I feel like to just go to the schools that they can't see but what about the unseen people so if they go to the unseen people they go to the less listened to then I feel like it would increase support and advocacy and lastly I honestly don't understand except the problem because I would say I'm privileged enough to have done I think I did five hires and one advanced hire there were like a lot of subjects on that and when I told people I did higher sociology advanced psychology everyone's like oh my god your school does that and I was like yeah so I was really privileged enough to do those you know subjects have that variety and so I don't really know the extent but I know it's like a problem where I can if for example I want to do a lot I can't much of an impact I'll have on me I was actually just thinking there this is a perfect example of myself thinking as I'm speaking I'm actually going to change my position on the extent of the issue I think it is because I was just thinking because Oxford Order and Perthshire and stuff typically is a bit more affluent a lot of the issues around poverty sometimes go actually under the radar and they're not thought about and I was also thinking about all the rest of it and as you're saying Zaynab people are shocked that your school does psychology if a school is struggling in terms of attainment and league tables and all the rest of it and there's a greater proportion of social issues within the school within the community than other areas teachers don't go to that school so they'll go to the better school with the kids who are typically more affluent and typically get on a much better level of social problems with kids who are in distress and so on so what I think happens is it again comes back to resourcing schools with greater socioeconomic difficulties within their communities don't get the teachers that do psychology that do sociology and this again exacerbates this income disparity and the grades what's the word again that's the one poverty related attainment gap, thank you I think that exacerbates the issue and it's this kind of poverty going underneath the radar in my area and teachers and people picking schools based on league tables and that again creating this negative feedback whereby teachers leave the school because they're not doing as well as in attainment and then it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse and then we actually need to try and break these cycles which is just again my thinking as I go along and anybody else like to any more from the audience yeah just to say that I think a big part of the discussion that we always leave out is how schools are part of structural inequality and schools reinforce structural inequalities and so I'm a bit concerned sometimes that that then sometimes even the word poverty the word poverty sort of gets away for the discussion about class the discussion about racism gender fluidity you know stereotypes of gender also how the curriculum reinforces inequality both by content as well as pedagogy how classes are taught in schools and so then I think personally some of the students know this when they're in school they know what's happening and then that could be interpreted as anger that could be interpreted as there's no any space for their voice or for their reality what they see the world and the opportunities that could be created for them to analyse that and to have an advocacy academy in schools that's what should be happening and so in all the discussion about dysfunctional families I mean there's real challenges for families, for kids in schools that need to be part of the curriculum these are opportunities they're no problems so I think we're missing a bit and then also the piece about statistics and data the data show that exclusions is a bigger issue in lower income communities and within communities in those communities so that's what we should be looking at why is this happening that know just the symptoms but why and then until we look at why we've not really got to get the solution whether it be in resources whether it be in teacher training whether it be in the school administration whether it be in government who's in government and the decisions that they're making and why working class kids are getting working class jobs and anyway the subject areas that the choices are we know these things but what we did about it so I'll leave it there so I had a thought of what I was going to say and I include a colleague next to me whispered to me exactly what I was going to say so it's obviously something that we've noticed that there's exclusion but there's also a different kind of exclusion manifest is truancy where young people will exclude themselves because schools not working for them for a brief period of time include them worked with I think it's pupil equity fund money from schools and we were able to go into schools get a list of names of people that weren't attending or were struggling and we could go to the house and I want to use this one example of a boy it was a really quick intervention all I knew about him was he had bright red hair and he wasn't coming to school so I knew his address the letterbox was taped up so I sat outside his house a bit of time each day so eventually I saw a woman with bright red hair with a baby with bright red hair so I went and grabbed her and found out that the door was taped up so they weren't getting any bills because they couldn't afford anything she didn't know her son wasn't going to school because he blocked the school's number which I think is really clever but he, talking to him their family was in poverty he wasn't going to school because the school uniform didn't fit and he had holes in his shoes so once that was sorted he was back at school fine, no problem that was it no social work intervention, nothing really quick, really easy solution because the problem is huge I've worked across five Sterling, Folkirk, Glasgow Westinbach, poverty is huge in and out of people's houses you get referrals for all sorts of different emotional distress it's all linked to poverty and not just poverty money-wise poverty of opportunity you know poverty of community poverty and in terms of what can be done about it it's resourcing again you know I don't have enough to pay my bills and food and I'll go and do it, I'll chase people there are people that will go and do it there are organisations that will go and do it there just needs to be the resources and the motivation to do it because the teachers can't go out of school and chase people up they don't often have the information about what's going on at home they just see the can opening up that needs to be addressed at home at night, in the mornings before and after school all those times when things are going wrong when people are feeling the effects of poverty I think that's a really nice example of sometimes it's a really specific thing that just it can be fixed actually quite easily and the sort of blockage is there I think you know, non-ascends at school and exclusions from school is a problem because by and large schools are really beneficial places for kids to be and there's a lot of unsung work I don't think there's much evidence of teachers choosing schools based on entertainment I know that a lot of parents do that I think there's a lot of exceptional teachers who take these jobs in challenging areas and do a lot of unsung work in terms of cost of living, cost of school day that happens at schools in these kind of areas and we need to recognise that that's a really important support service for kids and it's one of the reasons why exclusion can be so damaging because actually you're not just out of education but you might be out of your free school meals for that period of time you might be out of the only adult who takes an interest in how your day is going and how you're feeling there's a lot of things that are peripheral to education that go on in schools that are really important for kids and that when they're not attending whether through choice in that sense or through exclusion those things come away and the whole thing starts to crumble Yeah, I just done that and we did a massive project on COVID and children in COVID and one of the questions we asked them was what was the best thing during COVID and coronavirus and so many of the responses were from young people who were glad to be out of school and I want you to know why they were glad to be out of school and a lot of it was about bullying maybe there were trans, maybe there was something else going on, maybe they were in your diverse and it was the breather of not having to do it and I haven't really done the data properly but it was one of the most interesting parts of the data for me because all that data was a failure of education these young people were better off in spite of all the things that you said that are absolutely true for most young people for these young people it was better not to be in school and we're not really addressing that I think either Just quickly The statistic that always comes to my mind is the fact that we've been doing higher since 1888 it's a very long time and they've changed very little since I know, crazy and I think the other one that comes to my head is that I can't remember who said it to me but it was the school system only caters about 10% of students who fit the specific mould and a lot of time schools trying to push square blocks into circle holes those nursery games that's the analogy I always remember schools trying to force people into this mould doesn't work and then for some students it works well for them for others it's the worst place on earth and again this goes back to resourcing and how do you cater for different people's needs and how do you recognise different people's needs just again some of my thoughts Just picking up on that point and again within Scotland we did an independent children's rights impact assessment in relation to the effects of the pandemic and we've been doing a lot of work since and the point that Laura was just making is that for some children the educational experience during COVID was actually really positive the flexibility they had and I think again particularly for some neurodivergent children actually the educational experience was really positive so how do we learn from that and ensure that that flexibility is maintained that they are given all of that support because one of the things that happened is that suddenly we transitioned straight back into education as it was good learning for those young people that were really thriving and really loving that the kind of flexibility also conversations particularly with older children that I had were saying I actually love the idea I can sleep in for a wee bit and I actually like doing my schoolwork late at night because that's when I'm kind of engaging and actually the school doesn't work very well for me and I don't think we've taken enough learning from that and so some of the children who exclude themselves or are excluded from children the flexibility that we had during COVID actually really worked for them so how can we learn from that and then coming back I think to the point about how to ensure that families are supported and linking back to poverty again seeing this as a rights issue that children have the rights to an adequate standard of living they have the right to support for their families and to social security support have we got a backing soundtrack now it's good I was going to have to go on some kind of monologue or something but the right to social security the right to support for parents parental mental health is a huge huge big thing and I've spoken to a lot of head teachers all around the country particularly I've got to say in rural and island communities where they were using pupil equity fund for exactly that purpose and it was providing an absolute lifeline because effectively it was going in supporting families to make sure that they had the support that they needed that they were entitled to that other parts of the system were failing on the morning and make sure that you're clean and that the clothes were washed and that children could go to school and engage with the positives of schooling which may include breakfast club and dinner clubs but also not having that clean uniform not being able to get to school because your parents haven't woken up in the morning and you're a young carer if you're care experienced again through the care of all of that stuff going on we know the children who are most likely are at risk and aren't engaging and we know actually what really works is that kind of trusted adult kind of support getting in and around the family and delivering that through schools or wherever doesn't really matter but it needs to be someone that's kind of independent enough from statutory services but funded by the state to ensure that the family's getting that support so that the school can become that amazing kind of safe supported place where you're accessing those universal services without stigma but there's a real gap because of failures in social security and social work support and care provision, mental health services for parents which are meaning that the children are then missing out from school which actually for many of them would be a really safe space and I'm worried that there's strong evidence that schools are using that PEF funding, that pupil equity funding which was short term funding and now doesn't exist in many places to fill a gap that should be seen as a basic right that your family should be supported your parents' mental health should be supported you've got social security in place so that you're able to access school in a fair way and I think there's that real gap I think particularly post-COVID that I'm hugely concerned about because it was fantastic work and the example you gave was amazing and I've heard that across the country but it was often unsustainably funded and kind of done based on the goodwill of individual amazing practitioners but it wasn't built in as a kind of core service and that's a huge problem so I'm just going to interrupt before I like get to you is that it's now quarter to six I know that Laura has to leave kind of like quite shortly so I'm going to suggest that we maybe listen to your point and then we might kind of like I don't know we could try and have a look at the next question and see whether we could kind of get through one more but yeah I'm just conscious Laura's got to leave to catch a flight so yeah this has been wonderful so but let me pass the mic over to you I'd just like to echo what you're saying Bruce that the thing is whole family support really does make a difference and certainly with the projects that I manage they all offer whole family support mediation and conflict resolution skills but there's a load of organisations many of which will be here today that already operate in the third sector as you call us and these are really high quality interventions that really work that could demonstrate that actually having that support attached to schools would like de-distress the teachers because they would know that they could go to their local communities it's community based support it's gone back to old fashioned looking after your community and things like that so I suppose when people, young people are in the parliamentary positions and they think about funding opportunities that come forward for charities because we all rely on these funds is that whole family support makes an absolute difference and people seeing families as being problematic and getting up for their kids and things like that, there's clearly something wrong and again that's de-dress and it's poverty and we can address things as a combined in a lot of efforts I think and we should have more of that proving our partnership, saying that we do work in partnership with schools, with social work and so no looking at it as a blame culture then we blame one social worker one teacher one less it's a systematic failure I'll shut up now so what I'm going to suggest is that we carry on and we can squidge Laura out and Meg's going to help you get a taxi no, it's up to you how you feel do you want me to give you a kind of like nod when it's like in 10 minutes okay so can the panel speak to the situation in Scotland for minority ethnic groups and other protected characteristics are we seeing the same patterns as in England with disproportional exclusion rates I could say something about the data in the excluded lives project we have the we have been watching all of the four different jurisdictions and at one point I kind of lost my head and screamed at the English people this is an English problem because England is horrendous you know Scotland's clearly it's not good but England is horrendous and I think the level of actual exclusion recorded as well and there's something going on they're trying to learn from Scotland Scotland's looked at as the best place to be and in many ways it's clear there are major problems here clear this conversation but you're doing better than most other places even though it's still not good enough so the Scottish Government collects statistics every other year on exclusions and there's not to my knowledge any particular it obviously is recorded by way of minority ethnic group through CMIS but that's not something that's ever been raised as a particular issue in terms of protected characteristics it's disability and it's sex so boys are excluded much more than girls and it probably kind of just says well of course but I think there's a question there as to why that might be I don't know what the answer to that question so those are the two protected characteristics that are particularly highlighted year on year it's black boys as you can imagine in England here and on the disabled children point I think that's really clear statistics but I think it's four times or five times more likely and again particularly when we think about neurodivergent children as well and interpreting their communication in a way that's not not appropriate and one of the things that I'm really concerned about is that we've actually got some legal structures in place like coordinated support plans that many of these children particularly care experience children are entitled to which would give legal protection in terms of education plan that you could then take to the additional support from the Australian again expert on this but there's actually kind of a domestic legal framework that should be providing protection for many of these children and it's not being used and I think there's a very strong concern that we've got that it's intentionally not being used because it's got accountability and I think the big message for me is there's a real lack of accountability we've all recognized what the problems are and we see that every day in the children and young people we speak to but there's a real lack of mechanisms for access to justice and accountability on this So sorry to hock this but this is kind of my thing so one of the interesting conversations we've been having recently is that in terms of the law when a child is excluded from school local authority have to tell them about their right of appeal so the school will say you've been excluded from school three days and you've got a right of appeal you can go to the Education Appeal Committee and that's fine but there's no duty to tell the child or their parents about the rights that they have in terms of bringing a case to the tribunal where the exclusion is related to the child's disability and so that is a conversation that we've been having recently with the tribunal and actually with some of the local authorities around that so there's at least one local authority who are going back and looking at their standard letters on that and actually the tribunal if you go and look at the cases there's a really a really good legal framework in which to look at these things because you can look at the individual case and about whether there was discrimination there but also particularly for local authority schools about this idea of indirect discrimination so some of the questions that we're asking there as well let's look at the rates of exclusion within this local authority for people who are not disabled compared with people who are disabled, people who have specifically ADHD if that's the issue or specifically on the autistic spectrum where that's the issue and where is your justification for that so it really puts the bull back in the authorities court in terms of saying why is that the case is that something that you can justify and where that's not the case the tribunal's remedies are much broader if you go to an appeal at the Education Appeal Committee you win your appeal the exclusion comes off your record that's it it's an individual effect you go to the tribunal the tribunal's got much broader powers you can say to the local authority you need to change your policy on this you need to consult meaningfully with young people who have been excluded in doing so you need to put in place targets for reducing that exclusion gap between disabled pupils and non-disabled pupils so it's a really beneficial I think favourable legal framework in which to ask those questions and to have them answered that's actually really interesting sorry I was going to say would you think there's a reluctance to provide these sort of legally binding care plans obviously you mentioned about tribunals and stuff but will you say local authorities and schools are reluctant to actually provide these sort of care plans in the first place that's kind of my first immediate thought I mean there definitely is I don't think that's so much of an issue when it comes to exclusions you know I think that's a broader issue about the Coordinated Sport Plan and what we've seen in recent years has been a big increase in the number of pupils recorded as having additional support needs and a corresponding decrease in the number of pupils with Coordinated Sport Plan so something isn't adding up there and I think it would be fair to describe that as a reluctance to open those plans yeah that's part of it at least I just want to say thank you to Laura as she leaves What I was going to say in regards to the question is I don't think it's bad as England in regards to exclusion rates most of them are informal most of them don't go through the books and when I think about exclusion I'm not really just thinking about the ones where it's just like you're excluded don't come to school ever again I'm thinking about the ones where they're like we don't want you in the school premises right now leave we don't want to see you for two days and then you can come back you see those two days you've missed and you keep missing those days it's not like you're not coming back to school again you know from your things so I feel like in regards to that then yeah because when I was coming here when I was coming here I got a phone call from my brother's school it's not the parent she's like well I need you to come remove him from school premises and she's like oh yeah he's been really disorderly blah blah blah and I'm explaining to her my mum is not home so he can't come and she's like I don't know what's going to happen but he needs to get off school you know property and I'm like where's he going to go and she's like I don't know he could just sit at the bus stop so my brother went to the bus stop and my mum had to my mum came here but had to leave early to go pick him up from the bus stop so that kind of thing is not documented do you know what I mean he's going to go to school tomorrow but it's not documented what just happened so that's kind of my point of view yeah I mean I don't know how the rest of you feel about this but would you say like exclusions can sometimes be given out for really flaky or silly reasons I mean certainly I mean I've seen exclusions in my own school and in other schools and amongst my friendship group and sometimes you know you'll read a letter you get from local authority for the reason why you've been excluded and you think really you're excluding someone for that and you know it's the biggest question did the school create the situation that caused the exclusion in the first place would you say that's an issue at all I don't know I mean I think probably not deliberately but I mean certainly you know there's some kind of wider structural issues that contribute to behaviours and so on I can only speak to the cases that come to me that tend to be fairly serious incidents and there's you know there's question marks about how they dealt with but yeah there may well be the thing with I guess a short term exclusion that is a one off or an occasional thing is that you know you're back in school in a very short period of time who's got the time and energy and inclination to appeal that just for the sake of taking off your school record so the rates of appeal are actually fairly low even though individual pupils may feel aggrieved at the individual case so again there's not necessarily a record of all of that and just one more point link to protected characteristics in terms of disabled children in Scotland. One of the things that we saw throughout the pandemic was an increase in kind of moves to home education where schools were failing to provide the tailored support and reasonable adjustments that you would expect to ensure that disabled children could continue to engage with education that wasn't working for many disabled children and so we have seen an increase in children coming outside of the education system and to school based mainstream on the specialized provision towards homeschooling and I don't think there's been enough work around that in terms of a lot of the parents that we speak to are saying it wasn't a choice it's not that they have a preference for homeschooling it was just that they weren't receiving the support from the state that they should have got that holistic approach to an education that develops children to their fullest potential wasn't available and so they're defaulting into homeschooling and I am concerned that we're seeing in terms of it wouldn't be labeled as exclusion because it's seen as a voluntary choice but actually it's a choice predicated it's a choice that we're parents are saying we don't really have a choice here we're doing it because there is no real provision and I think that there's a piece of work that needs to be done around that as well. So I'm going to just interrupt we're a little bit over time and we have the wine coming in so I would like to maybe ask the panel if they've got just to kind of like if they've got anything else they would like to sort of like sum up or if there's something they haven't managed to kind of like say just to sort of like round off and then we can finish for the day and have a little bit of a break have some wine carry on the chat that we had during the cups of tea for those that can stay and then we're going to screen the documentary so I just want to find out what I wanted to say was that regardless of all these issues I feel like it just goes back to the conversations with the people being affected so I feel like there's a lot of barriers the people making the processes the system and people were actually affected by this decision so any decision made for us without us is against us and that's just a simple thing so if you're not coming to us to talk to us about how this is going to affect us then it's against us I don't care what you think your intention is about but if you're not talking to us about it it's against us. I just want to say thanks to everyone that's been involved in this I know it's been a huge labour of love and I know it's been incredibly challenging and it's been really exciting to be part of this so thanks to all of you who've been real leaders in this and human rights leaders which is absolutely fantastic and again for all of the young human rights defenders that are here huge, huge thank you and also to all of you in the room I think it's been a really powerful discussion and I think that what's really important to me is that we take what we've discussed and learnt here and think about how we can use any of that kind of power that we have to affect change and so my kind of big request then would be please get in contact with me and my office and talk about how we can support you to affect change for children and young people because I would like this to be part of an ongoing conversation so just a big thanks and also just reflecting on the huge work that's been done over the last few years during the pandemic I know that all of you in the room have been working incredibly hard and I know that kind of feeling that we're all tired at the moment and when you're confronted with all of the challenges we've seen here but so just a big thank you and a big commitment from me to support you in any way that I can. Yeah, just to reiterate the previous points as well, thank you so much, I mean although we're talking about some really difficult subjects and there's a lot of issues with an education within Scotland at the moment, the fact that you're all here sitting in this room goes to show that people are caring, people do want to make a change and that you know the fact that we have our MSYPs and allowing people in the room and we've got people from all different sectors across our country this does actually show me that there is hope you know there are people who want to listen there are people who want to make a change so for that and all the work that you guys have been doing thank you so much. So one point that I do want to make that I thought might come up in a later question that we didn't get to was one of the depressing things about informal exclusions and part-time timetabling and all of those other things that don't necessarily come under the heading of exclusion in terms of how they're described it's not that it's legally complex to deal with it's that it's actually legally really straightforward to deal with, you're entitled to a full-time school education and if that's not happening then we can make that happen really quickly and so it shouldn't take somebody coming to a lawyer to do that and so I think there's just a big issue around children and families being aware of their rights and and then being empowered to to insist on them and I just want to really echo what Bruce has said like this this whole event was put together to start conversations to connect people from the human rights sector from the education sector from like you know the legal sector like and we kind of like are an overlap my organization and I wanted to kind of like bring that together looks like it's happy you know it's worked we've got some really different people in this room and chatting at lunchtime please continue to chat now but let's take the conversation on afterwards this is one moment in the life of the excluded documentary I want it to continue so I hope that we get to do that and thank you very much for coming