 I welcome you to the 12th meeting of the Education and Culture Committee in 2015. I remind all those present to switch off all electronic devices because they can interfere with the sound system. Our only item today is to continue the evidence that is taking on our inquiry into the attainment of pupils with a sensory impairment. I welcome to the committee this morning Alison McGillvery from Eastern Hampshire Council, David Watt Education Scotland, Brian Shannon, Fife Council, Eileen Burns, Hamilton School for the Deaf and Richard Hellawell from the Royal Blind. Good morning and welcome to you all. Thank you also for your written submissions, which we have read in advance of today's meeting and very interestingly were too. Our discussion today will be based on the evidence that we have received so far and from our visit yesterday to Craigie High School where we met staff from Dundee multisensory service and some of the pupils and parents who received support. On behalf of all the committee members who are there to say that it was a very useful visit and I want to place on record our thanks to Craigie High School and the multisensory service for welcoming us yesterday in Dundee, so thank you very much for that. I'm going to move straight to questions from members. I'm going to begin with Mary Scanlon. Thank you, convener. I wanted to ask Marie Kelly, education senior manager from Eastrend, through but I think she's become Alison McGillvery. Mary Kelly is not here. No, I realize that. I'll see you rise that, okay. You know, but I think it's Alison McGillvery in Eastrend. I was particularly taken by your evidence, which I thought was very sorry, your briefing paper. I really just want to look generally speaking at the role in providing early intervention support for families and children. I think I now have an awareness, thanks to Mark Griffin's bill, etc. That 90 per cent of children with a hearing impairment are born to hearing families, so that's one thing. But also looking at any improvements that can be made to promote multi-agency working at the earliest opportunity, information sharing, etc. So it's along those lines that I want to ask. But the first page of your briefing, I'm quite impressed to see that Eastrend for our schools hold comprehensive data on the attainment of all children through analysis of baseline standardised tests at P3, P5, P7 and S2 and SQA results, and also now in second year, because I have to say that in comparison with the Audit Scotland report of last year, they are saying that some councils, and I realise now who it is, look at standardised tests on a regular basis, but they also say, at a council level, there is no consistent approach to tracking and monitoring progressive pupils from P1 to S3. So it seems to me that you might be one of the better ones, if I can put it that way, that you do seem to have that information that appears to be lacking in the evidence that I'm taking. So it's perhaps just to ask you first of all, how do you manage to get this baseline standardised tests, which is so critical to identifying sensory loss? We do collect very robust data in the authority for all our learners. We're always improving on that. We're not complacent about the information we have, but we do have a range of information about young people's attainment. It's held within the schools and then collated centrally, so our staff can track any young person's attainment very closely and support it and intervene as appropriate. The standardised tests are something that East Renfisher has carried out for a number of years now. They are a very good indication of a young person's progress, where they are in terms of curriculum for excellence and where the interventions are necessary, and it does support our schools and our staff to do that. I mean, you had asked about early intervention, also, our service? The answer in relation to nursery schools as well, although I appreciate your testing, does it take place? We do have in place a very good-staged intervention system so that all our staff are very aware of the needs of all the young people that they work with as soon as they come into any of our provision, be it pre-five or right on until high schools. They are also very aware of the range of impairments and barriers that there can be to learning. They are very attuned to whether our children are making the progress that they should be making. That is where the strong multi-agency work comes in. We have good joint support teams, multi-agency partnerships from very early on. We have very good work with our educational psychologists. If there is anything that gives concern about a child's progress, that will be looked at closely and it will be followed up. Confident that any child, let's say, new born to five, is picked up in terms of any sensory impairment, and you are confident that that child is not only identified but given the support multi-agency to address their needs and support them through school. If we are aware that there is a sensory impairment for a child, all that support will come into place very quickly. I thought that you said that you would be aware of everything in place. I know from my colleagues who work in the service that someone may come into the authority from elsewhere. There may be instances where, for whatever reason, that has not been picked up by the time that a young person or child comes into provision. I would hope that we would very quickly identify if that was the case. We have good relationships with our allied health professional colleagues. There is good information sharing in the authority. We work with even babies in the home. We have a home visiting teacher who is separate from the sensory support service, but she works alongside that service. She will sometimes alternate visits. The home visiting teacher may be accompanied by one of the sensory support service. She may have alternate fortnightly visits from home visiting or sensory support. In that way, we are also able to support families because, as you say, an understanding of sensory impairment and the impact of that for parents can be very difficult, so they are working with the right people and the right partnerships early on. It can make a significant difference to how they feel and how they, in turn, are able to support their child. That is helpful. I wonder if I may ask about the baseline standardised tests. I am aware that there is no national government test. I am also aware that many local authorities in Scotland buy in tests from the private sector in England, and there is no comparison between one local authority and another. When you say that the baseline is standardised, given the background that is happening, I do not think that there was a standardised test across Scotland. Have I misunderstood that? It is a standardised test within the authority and we commission it. Within your authority, I see. You could not compare that with any other authority. No, we can only compare the progress of children against each other within the authority. We can see where we expect them to be and whether they are above or below that line. I understand that better, but we could not make a comparison between yours and other authorities, because they are not the standardised. It is not the standardised. That is only standardised to East Renfrewshire, not across Scotland. That is very helpful. Can I ask the rest of the panel what your views are or your experience of early intervention on whether it is the children with hearing impairment or children with a visual impairment? We have heard what East Renfrewshire's views are, but I just want to hear what the rest of the panel is on the questions that Mary Scanlon has just been asking. David, can I start with you? I think that it is clearly an area that we can continue to improve on. We are putting in place through getting it right for every child. The approach to multi-agency working addresses the good practice that takes place in East Renfrewshire, where, from zero to five, a named person will be within health to identify any areas that are requiring support. They are working together in partnership with education and other providers to ensure that the additional support needs of those children are met at an early stage. The early years collaborative is rolling through and has a set of stretch aims with screening at 30 months. We are in and around additional support within the early years collaborative. It is an area that requires further improvement. Obviously, the newborn here in the screening programme has been in place in Scotland for a number of years now. It was implemented very differently in Scotland compared to England, in that England had a standardised screening programme and a follow-up programme for professionals and families to monitor and intervene effectively. Within Scotland, we have a standard screening programme but we have two different screening methods in place, depending on the different health boards. Unfortunately, there has never been a programme in place to monitor the children's development. In England, they used the early monitoring protocols, which were part of their early years programme. Initially, those materials were available in Scotland but now they are no longer available, so there is not a standardised method. In addition to that, going back to the Public Health Institute of Scotland, dating back to 2003, it recommended that, at the point of sharing the news with family that their child was deaf, that there should not just be a health professional but another professional at that point that said education or social services. In the early years standards birth to three that were produced through the Scottish Sensities Centre, that was one of the recommendations. That is what we do in our area. Myself and my colleague are responsible for sharing the news with the family, phoning the family the next day, providing families with information, making sure that families are flexible in their approach, because sometimes families will start out with maybe wanting spoken language development as their desired aim, but, through a range of factors, that might not be achievable. I encourage families to be flexible in their approach and to have a positive aspect to deafness. I think that that can only work if we have that multi-agency working, as it were, on the ground and therefore influencing. I think that there is an influence from myself. I have gained experience when working with my colleague who does the screen, but I think that he has gained experience of the bigger picture as it were. I think that there certainly needs to be a training programme for staff. There needs to be in place a standardised method of monitoring language development. The language and protocols as the advantage of it does not just do spoken language, it also does British Sign language. Having all children are assessed by health visitors at an early stage using a standardised method, we need to have a standardised method to identify where children are so that a child and family-centred approach to intervening to where things are not going right can be put in place. We have newborn hearing screening, which is a wonderful thing. At an early age, before children leave the maternity hospital, we know if they are deaf. They are provided with hearing aids as early as possible. Cochlear implantation has been taken place as early as ever before. However, in those early years, the idea of British Sign language has been used with children right at that early stage, where it is basically the only language that they can communicate with naturally and have full access to is often not provided, is not suggested as a positive option for children. With respect to the multi-agency group, who is part of that multi-agency group? I think that it is important. If a child has been diagnosed as deaf, it is important that we try to dispel the deficit approach of the end of the world. We need to have deaf people involved in that multi-agency group, where parents can say, oh right, this is a deaf person communicating very effectively, married, got children functioning within society to try to make it a much more positive way of looking at deafness. I would say that health, we have to raise awareness with respect to health about the positive effect of teaching children, giving children access to a language as early as possible. How important that is, because often deaf health professionals are discouraging parents from making use of sign language, but what they are saying is that if you sign with your child, then their spoken language development will be affected by it. The evidence is not the case. We have to dispel that approach. Language delay for deaf children is something that we are just accepting. We are accepting that there are times in your life that you will not be able to communicate. When you are waiting for cochlear implantation, when you have a cochlear implant and you take it out at night, we are accepting that there are times when you are not able to communicate. That is because of the monolingual approach to deaf education that we have. Throughout the whole of the world, bilingualism is thought of as a fantastic thing for cognitive development, but when it comes to deaf children it is considered, do not sign. I know that that is the advice that the parents of deaf children are being given. If you are told by a consultant that you do not sign with your child, that will have a massive effect on how you are going to view British Sign Language. To raise the attainment of deaf children, what we have to do is allow them to develop cognitively. To do that, they need a language. There is a language there that they can have access to, but we are denying them access to it. From an early age, we have to say, oh, your child is deaf, do you know what? British Sign Language might be a good thing to learn. From the early stages, their mind will be developing and they will become cognitively active. We have to support that. We have to say, right, we are going to provide you with sign language classes in the home. That is practice in Scotland. I am not saying that that does not happen. It does happen. There is good practice in that and we have to learn from that, but it is not the norm. We are leaving children with no language so that we can focus on spoken language. I think that, to improve the attainment, my experience is that if we can give language as early as possible and there is a language there, it is not going to be easy, but by supporting parents, teaching them sign language in the home, making it accessible, allowing them to learn it, because going to a class might not be a reasonable thing to do for somebody who has just got a new baby. We have to think outside the box and provide support for families to learn sign language to dispel that deficit idea that spoken language will be held back because you are using sign language the opposite of the case. In the field of visual impairment, there is an echo of what has just been said about sign language in the use of braille. Of course, it is not a distinct language in anything like the same way, but it is the means of access to the written word. The time that a child best learns braille is the time when his or her peers are learning to read. It is those same connections that are being made and those same skills that are being learned. Where early intervention comes in is very much that braille needs to be front-loaded. As do other aspects such as habilitation, living skills and the equipping of access to the whole curriculum from as early as possible, because that is what gives the child confidence and it gives the child target setting, it gives them something to aim at and helps the child to realise that they can be part of this whole education thing along with their peers and approach that with confidence. A huge amount of inclusion is about confidence and the child or young person feeling that they can be included, they can assert themselves, the things that they do say, motion whatever are affecting their environment and other people's response to them. It needs to happen as early as possible in the school career and regrettably it does not always. There is a lot of excellent practice around, but I think there has been a few influences over the last 10 or 15 years that have led to phased interventions. They have led because of well thought through and good ideas in terms of policy, in terms of presumption that you start with the mainstream classroom. Too often though, that means you starting somebody where they are going to fail and then there needs to be remedial work and catch up. It needs to be the other way round. The interventions that give the child that confidence and that access to the written word need to happen first and then the inclusion in the classroom is much more effective thereafter. Thank you, Richard. Sorry, Mary. Thank you. It was very helpful that I just did not want to take advantage. I have just got some final questions here, but if I can just lump them together. Most of you have talked about screening for new born. The national deaf children's society in their evidence last week told us that the guidance on that initiative it still hasn't been published. It came out in 2005, but there still hasn't been guidance and perhaps that could explain why there is different practice across Scotland. However, if I can go back to Alison Page 3, I can't pretend that I understand this, but I wonder if she could explain. There are many more children being diagnosed with a conductive hearing loss who display auditory processing disorder, APD type difficulties. I'm not familiar with that. It would be helpful just if I could get an explanation. Those children could benefit from programmes that are worked on at home and in the nursery. My second question is about best practice in working together and integrated health and social care. I'm quite shocked that you find it very difficult to get information from the health service for children and young people who are seen at ear, nose and throat departments. You get it from audiology, but there seems to be an unwillingness to share information, which is obviously detrimental in my final point, convener, which I don't think is being picked up in lines of questioning later. Is a recommendation that Scotland should consider the introduction of building guidelines such as building bulletin 93, which is mandatory in England? I'm not sure what building bulletin 93 would bring, but it would be helpful if you could explain to us how that would benefit buildings in Scotland and what it is. First of all, the auditory processing disorder. There are people sitting here who are far better qualified to explain that than I am, so I would look to my colleagues on this panel to give you a proper explanation of the impact of that. To be fair to health colleagues, to take the point about ear, nose and throat, a lot of good practice in supporting any additional support need comes down to good relationships. It can take time to foster relationships, whether it is with colleagues in education or with health colleagues. There are very strong links with our teams to the audiology departments in hospitals, but there are not the same clear pathways about who is contacting and who to get in touch with when it comes to diagnosis done through ear, nose and throat. That is what my team is telling me. Hence the desire to have that information in any health profession who is aware as soon as they are aware of a sensory impairment for a child or young person. The NHS is to give you that information, which would obviously be beneficial to the child. I would not want to characterise it as an unwillingness, but I think that there are things that could be done to improve the level of communication when it comes to that early identification diagnosis. Sometimes links are made and then there are restructurings or changes in whatever element of whichever agency is around a child, and so it is a constant process of making those contacts and being clear about who is the person to get in touch with. The building standards 93 is, I know, something that they have in England and Wales, and again our team were concerned that where there are new builds in Scotland that they should be built in such a way that they are accessible from the start, from the first brick, and we are not going in after the event to make buildings accessible to a range of young people. We are future proofing them to be inclusive for all the children and young people who are coming their way. I am trying to understand what changes, what difference would be seen. We have no open plan classrooms. We would not be building now with open plan. One of the strengths around supporting sensory impairment is that whatever you put in place to support children with sensory impairment is going to be a benefit to a range of other children with additional support names. Sound field systems can be a benefit to children on the autistic spectrum disorder as well and can help concentration and focus. I think that they were just citing that as an example in England and Wales where there is a mandatory supervision. I know that the preference might be that there is guidance, but I know that we would aspire to the best possible learning environment for all our children and that is something that they would like to have considered. Auditory processing disorder. I am happy to deal with the three issues that were raised. Auditory processing disorder is not really a standardized test. It is a phrase that is coming to common usage. It is better to think of auditory processing difficulties. It is a problem that many children can face. There are three different difficulties, either making sense of sound, making sense of phonics and making sense of language. The reason that it primarily exists is that the ear is a bit like a piano. It makes sense of sound in the same way that a sound always appears in the ear at the same place. The brain expects that sound to appear in the brain, the auditory part of the brain, at the same place. For some children, the sound leaves the ear at the correct place, but the brain does not pick it up in the right location. Therefore, they find making sense of sound quite challenging. They can find literacy quite challenging because it is a phonics-based system. In Fife, we have been developing a system using sign to overcome those challenges. We have used deaf children quite successfully and we have used some now-hearing children. That is the core of auditory processing difficulties. In relation to the ENT issue, which is certainly a common problem throughout Scotland, but to give you an indication of the difficulties that are there, according to the nice guidelines, 80 per cent of children at some point will have OME, or Titus Mediae with Infusion, which is Gluir. The mean for that period of Gluir is generally between six and ten weeks, which is roughly a term in the school. Quite often, the ENT will get a range of children coming through, or GPs will get a range of children coming to them and they will do a watch and wait, which is appropriate medically, but fails to understand the challenges that that presents for children in the classroom. The younger you are, the bigger impact Gluir has. If you are a youngster developing their language skills or in the early primary, that is a bigger impact than a 16 or 17-year-old who's brain is fully matured to sound. In a sense, that comes into tie into the building bulletin 93 issue. Deaf children have primary difficulty using auditory systems to sound. Either the mechanical part of the year doesn't work, namely the sound is attenuated, it's much quieter, or you have a sensory neural difficulty, which is that not only is the sound quieter but it's distorted, so the brain requires a nice signal in addition to that, which is where I think to look at deaf attainment within the wider or the barriers to deaf attainment within the wider barriers to attainment across the board, especially for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, is that the brain doesn't mature, it matures at different rates to sound, but in addition to that it requires a good strong language base and good working memory to make sense of what it's hearing. In a classroom, if it's noisy or you've got a lot of reverberation, reverberation just means an echoey, open plan, there's a difference between a gym hall and a classroom, one's very echoey, but some classrooms can be very echoey, then that degrades the signal for everyone, and therefore for deaf children, if we think of the ENT issue again, if we think that in every primary school 80 per cent of children at some point are going to have hearing difficulties, then you want to make sure that the schools are built to a standard that means that everyone can hear clearly. I would say that building bulletin 83 sets out that, but it's also quite discriminatory because it sets for instance a reverberation time of 0.6 for primary schools and 0.8 for secondary schools, and that's based on the principle's presumption that children's brains mature to sound, but if we think that we're living in an inclusive society at present moment, a lot of children in classrooms, their brains are not so fully mature to sound, so we should be setting a standard for primary schools for all builds and we should be trying to identify rooms within buildings that would be set for deaf children at 0.4 so that we have a more inclusive buildings. One of the things that I found a wee bit frustrating has been the quality of the data that supports some of the assertions that we've had made in evidence. Just as an example, we've got here four different figures for the number of children with visual impairment. 869 on the register for blind and partially sighted, 2,080 quoted in a test article, 2,200 Scottish sensory centre, 3,544 identified by Education Scotland. How can you ensure that you're providing adequate provision, that you're providing the correct support if you just don't have any figures to work on that are reliable? Pick up in the data. The data is not Education Scotland, that's the data from schools right across Scotland, so in September each year they complete a census to identify a whole range of factors including aspects related to additional support. The figures for additional support, I think, have been improving in terms of quality of data, but it's not measuring the same thing as blind or partially sighted. It's asking teachers and schools to identify those that require additional support due to a principal factor of visual impairment. That could be at a more sensitive level than blind or visually impaired and the same in terms of hearing impairment. That's not children who are deaf, that's schools picking up and possibly they're picking up in the goat ear because they know who the young people are in front of them, they know the challenges they face and that's a sensitive definition of what is required in terms of additional support and it represents the views of teachers as to who requires additional support to benefit from school education. What you're saying is that this 3544 are the sensory impaired children who have been identified and are receiving some form of support or provision within the school system? That's what we ask for teachers to record in the census and that's what that data is. I should mention that the education committee here was a major contributory factor to improving the data in this form because you asked us back in 2010 to take full account of those with mental health issues, young carers looked after and those with sensory impairment and as a result of that there was legislation introduced in amendment to the 2004 act that asked us to report and record right across additional support. The quality of that data now continues to improve and looking nationally and internationally. No one has that range of data around the prevalence of additional support needs, the educational outcomes that are received and the positive destinations that are recorded. We know more and more about those children. The blind registration process is a voluntary process and not everybody opts to do that. It means that the official statistics of how many blind people and how many partially sighted people there are is usually understated. It's probably more of an issue with people of working age and older than it is with young people. Nevertheless, there is a big problem at the moment with blind registration to make it something that is more commonly gone through by people who suffer a sight loss. I would echo what is being said. It is the larger figure that you should go by. Another factor with registration is that it is a work-based definition of blindness. It is based on practical ability to do work. Of course, what we are more interested in around the table today is educational attainment. The two are similar, but they are not necessarily the same thing. So, there is a danger in taking one such statistics from a measure that is to measure something using it any more than as a broad indicator of the numbers that are out there. Wouldn't you agree that it creates confusion if different organisations are quoting different conflicting figures? We sit here and we try to make sense of all this and try to get our heads around exactly what the dimensions of the figures are, and yet we have a multiplicity of figures. How do you do that? I agree entirely. The main thing at this point with the statistics is that we are getting past the view that they are conflicting, but towards an understanding of why there are different figures because they mean something different from each other. Yes, it makes it hard to get into the subject. Do you think that the confusion over the figures has affected any of the service provision? Can I just say why it is possible that, within deaf education, some people are providing higher figures than others? If you are looking at children who need additional support within schools, often the children who have a mild hearing loss—there are a lot of them—will not be included in those figures, although they will be included in the cried figures. That is possibly why there is a discrepancy. I feel that my experience of supporting deaf children is that we have quite good—we know who the children within our authority are, who are deaf. There are some issues about having a late being told about a child. Maybe you would like to have known and been involved earlier, maybe due to information coming from an audiology later, for some reason or not. I want to tell you about an example of good practice with respect to multi-agency working. The last authority that I worked in a monthly, I would go and sit with the ENT consultant in the audiology clinic and meet with parents and children of deaf children coming through the clinic. I quickly realised quite early on that that was a very important meeting. I could find out about their hearing loss, changes about what is happening, if they are going to an operation, and I could quickly change the support that I could provide. That was a good practice, but unfortunately I think that it is going to be a threat in that type of practice of education and audiology and health sitting together and meeting with parents and children. Because of the centralisation of the health service in the west of Scotland with the new hospital and things, audiology might well be moved to there. It would be more difficult for local authorities outwith to come and meet just with their client base, because their client base might have appointments all over the place and it will not be realistic. With the confusion, how is it going to be resolved? We are looking at educational attainment and therefore notice should be given to the data that we have in education. It can still be improved, but we are identifying within schools more young people with additional support needs. Those figures continue to increase. If we are getting things right in terms of support, we should now be expecting those figures to decrease because we have put in place the support that is met needs. I think that there could be a role for greater publicity for the Scottish figures and what it is telling us. We are going to review the census and how it applies in Scotland. What we aim to do for that is to have a degree of greater consistency across education authorities. Some education authorities are identifying 10 per cent of the pupil population with additional support needs. Others are identifying in the low 30s. I think that if we can standardise and have a greater consistency, we would be looking to ensure that there is not a misallocation of resources in that. Just to touch on another sort of conflict in the information given, East Ranffshire Council has indicated that in terms of visually impaired and hearing impaired children, their attainment levels are at least equal to other pupils. In some cases, that is better, which conflicts a little bit with some of the stuff that we have been hearing from elsewhere. However, there is an element of support from Education Scotland. In terms of positive destinations, Education Scotland is stating that visually impaired and hearing impaired students are performing well and above national average. There is some support there for East Ranffshire's view, but it is still at odds with everything that we have heard up to now. I would be interested to know how that comes. I do not think that we are complacent that the attainment outcomes for deaf children and those with additional payment are not good enough. They are below national averages in terms of the overall tariff score and the range of qualifications that they get. There is no complacency here. We need to do better by those with additional support needs right across the piece in terms of Scotland. If you have an additional support, you can be achieving at 60 per cent of the national average, and that is not good enough either. It is where we are in Scotland just now, and it is about our schools, our good schools, but within the school it is who you are within that school. It is the background you bring, it is the nature of your additional support needs, and schools could go further to do better by those with additional support needs. I am delighted that we are in the position that we are in with regard to our young people. I think that it is their success that we have supported them to achieve that. As David said, we are not complacent. We are talking about small numbers, and we are talking specifically about those for whom sensory impairment is the sole barrier that we are aware of to their learning. We have a vision for all learners in East Renfrewshire to achieve. It is very important to us that that is the case. Whatever level of attainment they can exceed to. We have the data. It is not magical stuff, but a lot of what is described in various documents is good practice, qualified, committed, passionate teachers who are very nurturing in their approach. They are looking at the health and wellbeing of those young people as well as supporting them to removing barriers to their learning. They are producing confident, independent young people who are able to talk about their needs and understand the different things that can be done to address those barriers to their learning, because the sensory support service staff cannot be with them all the time in schools. That brings me to the fact that we have very good schools that young people are learning in. Our sensory support staff are working alongside other staff who are equally committed to removing barriers to their learning for all young people, not just those who go on to university, but to see that every young person achieves the best that they possibly can. I think that we are good at listening to learners and seeing what they want when it comes to different equipment or adaptations. We talk to the young person, we see what they want to use, what they are comfortable with. We have an instance of a young man going on to university who has not made use of a radio transmitter throughout his secondary school career, but thinks that that might be useful to him. We are supporting him to try out different models, and he can have one with him for the transition into university. It is about listening to what the young people want as well. Working with families, we are thinking about learning-friendly approaches. One of the challenging curriculum for excellence is that there is more active learning. There is a bit more noise in classrooms than there was 40 years ago, and that is a good thing for learners, but we need to make sure that it does not impede the learning of young people with any kind of sensory impairment. We are proactive in seeking out up-to-date equipment. I know that, in my time and my involvement with the service, if a young person has needed something to help them to access their learning, that has been supplied as soon as possible. We do not have delays, we do not wait for budgets to be renewed to get what they need to access their learning. There is very good communication between the sensory support staff and schools, between the sensory support staff and the partners that they work with, and between the sensory support staff and parents, all of that together. It is just sound practice in meeting learners' needs. I wonder if I may ask Mr Watt a question. He said that there is no complicity, and I accept that. We also said that there are good schools and that there are bad schools. We have had an indication of Eastrends pressure, possibly because of geographical considerations and economic considerations. Why do we still have bad schools? I am not sure that we have said bad schools. I think that Scottish schools are good schools overall. We are providing a good service. I said that it is who you are within that school. In terms of schools that need to improve, the challenge is that it is a challenge that is taken up across Europe with greater success than we have. It is about equity and inclusiveness and ensuring that the environment that you are working in is taking note of who you are and the needs that you can engage with. It is a question of a social justice agenda, that your gender, your disabilities and your social background should not be a barrier to how well you do in schools. Maybe you can tell me in terms of bad schools, but in terms of local authority support, where would you say that there is insufficient local authority support to achieve what we are trying to do in terms of the attainment of those with sensory impairment? Which are the bad authorities? We work with authorities to self-evaluate their progress. What are the bad authorities, as far as you are concerned? I am not sure that that is a question that meets the needs of children and young people, that authorities in schools across Scotland are delivering on the capacities for the curriculum for excellence that they are providing the support. It does not happen in a coherent basis across an authority, because what happens is that, given the general level of good schooling, it is within school differences. We were told through the OECD that schools generally provide good, but it can be a classroom and a teacher in a school, and it is about consistency of good practice both across the school and across the authority. Other authorities that do better with those with deaf and hearing impairments are so that, even taking into account social background, there are authorities that do better by those young people with deaf and hearing impairments. We should be looking to challenge them further. Let me move on to the issue of data in providing an accurate picture of attainment. It suggests that the Scottish Government's ASN data, the additional support need data, is limited as only reports on the qualifications achieved by pupils when they leave school. However, non-ASN pupils' attainment data are also collected at S4. Do you think that the current data provides an accurate picture of the attainment of pupils with a single sensory impairment, or, if not, what is the merit of collecting additional attainment data specifically for pupils with a single sensory impairment? Perhaps Mr Shannon might put a comment on that. As with our authority, it uses the CLICS data using the Durham University's CEM. It's called the AFE assessments in children. Just as in East Membershire, the children set the assessments in primary 1, 3, 5 and 7, and then there are obviously the national qualifications at secondary level. Certainly, that data provides very useful information on where children are at across a broad range of subject areas. We need to really focus on issues around literacy, because that's an area that's been traditionally poorly served for deaf children, as it were. I agree that we need to look to where there is good practice and follow that good practice. In our authority, we've had quite a bit of success with children who've been using BSL in a mainstream setting and have had, using the AFE data—not only age-appropriate language, but language-based two years above their chronological age. We need to look to those types of successes. We need to look to where we can have—we need to look at the models of support that are in place for deaf children. The curriculum has changed quite drastically over the last 20, 30 years, but the models of support for deaf children have remained relatively quite similar. I've seen a lot of the submissions that were back to restricting the curriculum further—one-to-one support. We need to look to where we offer kids that chance to be resilient, to take risks. Quite often, deaf children feel quite reluctant to take those risks to be wrong. We need to look at where there are successes. AFE blind testing is really helpful, because it is quite independent, rather than, sometimes, internal assessments that can be subject to grade inflation. A period of risk for any pupil is at S4. Do you not think that whether by reporting on attainment of pupils with ASN at S4, as opposed to the earlier ones or later ones, creates significant problem in assessing attainment at that specific age? We would be better to have robust assessments throughout the primary period, and not just at S4. We need to know where deaf learners are at their learning, and so that that gap, as I said, can be bridged. It comes back in part to the data, because, as I said, for children who have a sensory neural-type deafness, they will come through the newborn screen. For children with gluey or other such issues, they may be missed within the system. There is definitely an issue around finding the data, but there certainly needs to be assessments and to seeing where they are in relation to their hearing peers throughout the primary system. Liam, do you have a brief supplementary? I was just interested. I think that it was falling on from David Watt's response to Chykel-Earon. When we wrestled with this idea, the Scottish Government insisted that what they want to do is raise attainment across the board, as well as closing the attainment gap, and I think that we have been wrestling whether or not there is an inherent contradiction there. I would be interested in David Watt's assessment of where that good practice is established and recognised. Is there more of a sort of evidence-based that resources are put in in order to support that in a way that they maybe aren't in other areas? That's not to say that there isn't provision, there aren't services to be provided that may have strength and weaknesses, but actually, in terms of the commitment to resource to the level that's needed, the good practice is emerging from those areas where there is that willingness to target the resource to meet the need. The good practice that we find within schools, the recent inspections across a number of schools, Calderside academy, Clydeview academy, Dell high school, Grange academy, St Margaret's primary, Carlawgy primary and Angus. Across the country, in different areas, it's both the level and nature of the support that's gone into schools and mainstream classes. There's also an element of deaf young people working together within the school to ensure that they're not socially isolated or excluded and that they can participate fully within those classes. I think that there's both an aspect of support, but it would echo Brian's point about young people being more confident. I think that that's an area to go into next, right across additional support needs, that we can expect young people to assert what they need in order to do better in the school and schools to be more responsive to them. We held a deaf learners conference just recently. Over 60 young deaf people came to meet first time they'd ever been in a room with that many deaf young people. They set out some of their challenges and their needs support, but they also set out some of achievements. It was happening to hear that the British champion motocross is deaf and that somebody in the Scottish national selling team is deaf and that young people are taking pride in how they represent themselves around their school and how they gain awards within their school. That aspect of their achievement has perhaps not been remarkable but some terrific young deaf people out there. I can understand the argument that having a more demanding constituency of interest helps in terms of making the case for improvements, but however it comes about, I think that what I'm trying to get at is whether or not there is a resource implication that requires local authorities and individual schools to prioritise investment into this area in order to make it work, or are there examples of a good practice where the resource doesn't appear to be particularly targeted, but just by happenstance you have a group of excellent teachers who work collaboratively with their counterparts in health services in other areas that just gets around the problems that others struggle to get around. David Bowie mentioned a lot of good practice there, and I know a lot of those schools that are good practice throughout Scotland. Most of the schools that David Bowie mentioned, if not all of them, have resource-based provision for their deaf children. Deaf people have been tingles for a long time that individually placed in a mainstream school is not the ideal way for them to be educated. Also, their social experiences in that way are very limiting and quite isolating and have issues in mental health. The Salamanca statement was the real cornerstone of our inclusion philosophy that we have taken forward or put the practices within this country and the rest of the world to a certain extent. Even in the Salamanca statement, which was such an inclusive document, it really was saying that children should be going to their mainstream school or the opportunities to go to their mainstream school. Within that document, I remember reading it, it was a paragraph that said, however, deaf children or deafblind children, due to their communication needs, their needs may be better served in a resource base or a special school. I remember when I read that, I thought, wow, you know, this document is really promoting inclusive education, but it's understanding that maybe that presumption of mainstreaming is something for deaf children, we should be saying, yeah, you need access to a mainstream education, but you know what, you need a deaf peer group too, you need maybe an opportunity for BSL to develop, you need specialist staff, but more importantly, a social group of deaf children who can communicate with effectively, naturally. I feel that the best practice throughout Scotland, I would like to see more resources spaces for deaf children to come together and be educated together, because deaf people have been telling us for a long time that there's a group called the deaf ex-mainstreamers group, right? What they basically do is they campaign, they've had a mainstream experience of being individually placed, and they're campaigning to say, I don't, we don't want that for our deaf children, we want deaf children to have a peer group and to be educated together and having access to specialist staff, especially with respect to teaching English to deaf children. I mean, deaf children don't have to be taught English in a completely different way, they don't hear, when we read something we can say, oh, that doesn't sound right, they don't hear that, so therefore the verb to be has to be taught to them, the irregularities of English has to be taught as a second language. I often think that it's a wee bit like learning Latin, right? Because BSL has a different word order, English is from English, it's quite a difficult skill job to teach deaf children English, and if you're in a resource base with teachers who are skilled and qualified and understand the challenges of learning English, I would see that the literacy skills of deaf children could improve. Where should we invest? I think I would want to stress trading and qualification. Certainly from our angle, there's visual impairment, the qualification on teaching with visual impairment is something that is needed to keep the quality up. Our submission mentions and I think other submissions have mentioned that there is a bit of a demographic problem, a little bit of a manpower planning problem coming up with retirels and there really is a need to have the expertise there, because that's what makes the whole thing work. People actually know how to set targets and know how to arrange an environment for a child with a visual impairment in the classroom situation. Similarly, investment in training and organising the provision of habilitation, which although it's not academic attainment measured in the same way as the other academic attainments, it must not be forgotten, because for a child with a visual impairment they need to know the techniques to get by in daily life, because to hold down a job they don't only need to have academic success, but they also need to know how to handle when you've been given a cup of tea or coffee, very simple things like that, that actually don't come naturally to somebody who can't see and they do need a good solid input of those habilitation skills through the skill career. I was going to come back to mainstreaming later on, but it would appear more sensible to bring it in now, because I mentioned it, no? No, we're going to go on with some of the teaching stuff that was with Gordon, if you don't mind. I'll come back to you, though. Gordon. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks, Richard, for that introduction, because I'm actually just going to start asking some questions about teaching stuff in specific. We heard that there is a lack of qualified teachers to support pupils with sensory impairments, and your own evidence said quite clearly that there are many qualified teachers that are visually impaired who have retired, and this has left a huge deficit in those who are able to fully understand how to educate pupils with a visual impairment. We've also taken evidence to suggest that, across the 32 local authorities, there are only a handful of audiologists and a lack of teachers who have appropriate BSL qualifications. My question is to the panel members, what practical steps can be taken to address the shortfall? With one suggestion, I think that we need to build that specialism as being a respected specialism and something that people want to go into and have a career progression in it. I suspect that the trend towards mainstreaming in the last 20 years has made mainstream teaching and generalism in teaching stuff being the thing to aim for, which is honourable and good, but you need people around who have the detailed expertise, and there needs to be a recognition of the people who have that. One possibility is to set up a pay structure that has some little incentive there for people who do that. Within the Royal Blind School, we have an addition to your salary. If you have QTVI and contracted braille skill, if you have both of those, then we pay a little incentive payment on top. That's something that could be done across Scotland, just as part of a strategy that is about recognition, about seeing those people as professionals who are important in the environment. I think that there is no incentive for anyone to become a teacher of the deaf, a financial incentive, with respect to the level of BSL skills of teachers. To become a teacher of the deaf, you only need to have BSL level 1, which is just a basic level of BSL to become. I would like to see that increased to at least level 3, so that, if you are working with deaf children, you can provide BSL as an option, because often what's happening is that teachers of the deaf are working with deaf children and their singing skills are such that they can offer BSL. That's why they don't offer it, because they can't provide it. I think that it's important that 10 per cent of teachers of the deaf, who are supporting pediatrically in Scotland, have BSL level 3 or above, so 90 per cent have lower. I would like to see local authorities, but there are good examples of good practice with local authorities paying for teachers to go through the BSL levels. On the whole, over the last 10 years, the BSL skills of teachers in Scotland have improved, things are improving, but we need to get more teachers up there with good level BSL skills so that they can offer it as an option with their deaf children. I would say that it's a two-way process, because I think that we've got to attract really good teachers. People are interested in wanting to help deaf children learn. In the past, there was an incentive, but it was quite small, and I don't think that it could consider the level of training. It would necessarily be a big incentive. I think that it was what the incentive was, that they wanted to work within the field. I think that we are getting from probationary teachers through to experienced teachers trying to promote the profession in a sense to make sure that we are getting the right people. I also think that we need to ensure that, yes, we must develop the signing-level skills, but we must also make sure that the people who have been in the field for so long haven't become quite narrow in their approach. We must recognise that there is a broad range of experiences out there that everyone in the field can learn from. I think that we must look to that broader experience. I will also make the point that this is not just about teachers or educational ideologists and making sure that they are training for that. However, a lot of deaf children are supported by very effective pupil support staff and ensuring that their skills are recognised and that they feel valued within that setup, and that they are valued members of the team. That is how services should work locally. It should ensure that it is a collegiate approach with a whole range of staff and not having a hierarchy of teachers of the deaf and support staff. I think that there is a whole range of things that could be put in place. I would endorse what Brian says about having interested in committed staff and about valuing those staff who have the qualifications. We support continuing lifelong professional learning for our teachers, but the pathway to becoming a teacher of the deaf or a teacher of the visually impaired. There is lots of support for learning courses that people can do and there is lots of in-house training. Our own sensory support staff deliver very high-quality sessions to staff in schools. However, if you are a teacher in a school who is thinking about that, you could only go into the job and then train to gain the qualification while you are in that post. Maybe we should consider some interim qualification around additional support needs so that people who might be considering that rather than go from none at all to suddenly everybody training. I know when people are training what they need to do is work alongside someone who is experiencing and can support them. It can be quite a lonely job if you are a peripatetic teacher and you are the voice for sensory impairment when you go out into a school and you are an unpromoted teacher and you may be explaining and challenging principal teachers and deput heads. There may be some pathway there and some incentive for people to take that route. I endorse looking at the range of qualifications and how that develops. Some of that could be focused in teaching Scotland's future. For ourselves, we have engaged with a group of deaf practitioners and deaf teachers. We have discussed with them how we could support their career-long professional learning through ways of gaining professional recognition, which is part and parcel of the GTCS approach for professional learning. That may be something that we can resource. Across visually impaired and hearing impaired pupils, there is a range of hearing and vision problems. What I wanted to ask was whether we have the appropriate levels of teaching staff in our mainstream schools, support units or specialist schools, because it is tailored to whatever the children's requirements are needed. Where are the gaps? Is it predominantly in mainstream schools or across the piece? A mainstream teacher sits with 30 children in front of her and one of them is deaf. It is a challenge to meet the needs of that child. They may have a deaf child maybe once or twice in their teaching career. It is important that they are supported. They are supported by the teachers of the deaf. It is important that the strategies that the teacher needs to use to include the deaf child in the class are aware of them. It always depends on who the teacher is, how willing they are to take on board that information, and how willing they are to make use of the equipment that is in place. In mainstream schools, there are limitations to the skills of a mainstream teacher. That is going to be obvious. I think that with the specialist knowledge that teachers of the deaf have, most teachers of the deaf in Scotland will go to Murray House to do a postgraduate diploma in deaf education, where they will learn about deaf studies and appropriate curriculum for deaf children. They will learn about teaching English to deaf children in a big area about assessments and special assessments for deaf children. Teachers have to be mandatory that, within five years of working with deaf children, they are qualified as a teacher of the deaf. We are well served by Edinburgh University. When teachers do come out, they have the skills to meet the needs of deaf children. It is getting more of teachers of the deaf qualified, is that the issue? I am going back to the training route. One of the methods that was used by the Scottish Government to try to increase numbers was to do away with having to attend the course at Murray House and go through the competency route, where there was internal verification of your standards. The problem is that that practice might not actually necessarily be a good practice. Therefore, you are in a sense learning a bad practice, and it is being verified. I think that the number of deaf children involved and the number of staff involved means that we must use an empowering model. We must be empowering the teachers to take that responsibility, which they do now through their registration, but we must also empower the kids to have an understanding of their deafness, and that can be in relation to their language, to audiology, etc. It comes back to them being the people that will enforce change in a sense. We have to move staff in a sense from that expert-driven model to a different model of support. I do not think that it is just about places, but it is about changing how we, in our profession, work with schools and with families, and in a sense give up some of that power, is it where? I concur with Brian about empowerment. Teachers can have classes of 30, and in that class you will have children, maybe one or two with sensory impairment, but you will have children on the artistic spectrum disorder. You will have children with social and emotional needs. You will have children with mental health issues. You might have a child who is feeling the impact of bereavement at that point in their school career. I think that our teachers are becoming more and more attuned to understanding, responding to and supporting a range of additional support needs. I find our staff very open and receptive to learn more about anything that will help them to support their children in front of them. They are willing to take on strategies and go to twilight classes. I think that they would take up opportunities to skill themselves more around sensory impairment, but it is also about the children and young people themselves being empowered, as Brian says, to challenge and to get the support that they need. Where does the shortage of qualified staff bite most? I think that it bites everywhere, but I think that where it has the most impact is a small in-population local authority that may be covering a wide area where they have a very small team of VIT teachers who are very stretched. To lose one, you are losing the reach to a group of pupils. I just wanted to ask, in relation to pupils who use British Sign Language as their only language, are we setting those pupils up to fail by saying that it is acceptable that they can be taught by a teacher who only has a level 1 qualification in that language? I would say to a certain extent that we are, because we are not giving them—have you access in the secondary curriculum, for example, be that the breadth of that curriculum, you need to have teachers there who have the ability, or interpreters, to interpret across the curriculum. You need to have the sign language skills to do that. That is why it is important that we increase the sign language skills. A lot of deaf children have told us that the sign language skills of their teachers often are not good enough. It is not just about sign language skills, but about the knowledge of the curriculum. If you are signing, for example, in higher physics, you need to understand that. If you are to give a proper interpretation, you cannot interpret things that you do not understand. We are needing a highly skilled job in the secondary school to have the sign language skills but also to have the skills to interpret across the curriculum. There is a lot of talk about getting interpreters into secondary schools. I think that that would be a good move to a certain extent, but I think that the subject knowledge—you have to have an interpreter who really understands the subject knowledge, too. I think that we are failing some deaf children because we are not giving them good access to the curriculum due to the sign language skills of those who are providing that access. It is a team approach within five, so it is not just teachers of the deaf that are working with BSL children. As I said, we have really effective pupil support staff who have got qualifications. However, there needs to be more training opportunities for the support staff and incentives for them career-wise. I think that, within teachers of the deaf, absolutely there needs to be a review of the level 1 standard. Generally, teachers will be directed towards—ideally, the skills base will match the child, as it were—but it absolutely needs to be reviewed. Mr Watt, in particular on the subject, given the answers that we have had, why is it appropriate for teachers of a spoken language for the minimum qualification for a teacher of a spoken language as a higher in English and yet for teachers of the deaf, the minimum language is level 1, which is described as basic and level 3 being equivalent to a higher grade. Why is there a disparity between teachers of the deaf and teachers of a spoken language? We need to continue to improve the qualifications of those who are using BSL in our schools. There is no doubt about that. That could be a key explanatory factor of the gap in terms of achievement and the impingement on language development. It is not a question of shying away from that. There could be further boosts in the 1 plus 2 languages approach. We are looking to broaden out BSL both in first language and in health 3. It is open to anyone to study BSL. We are looking at that just now. We can continue to improve the qualifications. It would still be the case for any learner that they would be more skilled in using language in their teacher. That is a challenge for teachers that somebody smarter than them is in their class. How do they ingest their practice to take account of learners that are smarter than them? That is about ensuring that you can provide the right support to the right person. If your medium of learning is BSL, you should be looking to achieve greater on that, and more could be done there. A quick supplementary question. Just a quick supplementary question. Yesterday, I gave you how we saw the two pupils in the exam and there was a communication with cameras and what have you. What level can technology play in terms of videos and applications, in terms of having centralised teaching? While we have this posity of educationalists, what can we do, particularly in the case of deaf and impaired, to use technology meaningfully to spread over the bad schools as well as the good schools, a faster track educational system? I am not going to answer your question, but I am going to talk a bit about the experience that you had yesterday of watching children accessing their exams in sign language. I welcome on to technology a bit at the end of that. In Scotland, deaf children are now able to, since 2000, to have their exams delivered in sign language, and they can now respond in sign language. I am proud that Scotland allows that access that is not provided in England. Although there are issues around accessing your exams in that way, the issues are the sign language skills of the person who is delivering the exam and the subject knowledge of the person who is delivering the exam, and the protocols that they are using in that exam room. There has been a pilot done using technology to provide better access to examination arrangements, and what that has been is working with the SQA and I think the Scottish Sency Centre producing a PDF of the exam with a video for each question alongside which you click on and a good quality interpretation of the exam questions are provided within the exam itself. Deaf children can access exams without having the teacher with them. Can you imagine how that feels when you get your teacher sitting watching you do an exam? They can watch the question being delivered as many times as they like, because can you imagine that feeling as if you can have that question again? Can you repeat that question? How that makes you feel? Given the children's ownership of their exam and also providing a good quality interpretation of the exam with the hope that that will provide better access to examinations for deaf children? I understand that, but it is getting them to the stage of using technology as it is today where we have a shortage of educationalists. How can we centralise and use technology to ensure that pupils can plug in to a teaching session? Probably not be able to centralise that, because the answer will be with children's own devices, and that is a challenge that faces us just now in terms of a balance between having secure internet within our schools and having young people able to use the technology that they use out with school. There is a tension in there, and so kids want to use their phone, but the wi-fi and internet are not there for them to do that. Making the use of that mobile technology is continually to engage with, because it is, as you are saying, part of the answer. Centralising teaching for children who live in remote and rural communities around the world has been commonplace through radio for decades. I remember when I was a child watching Blue Peter and he talked about children in the outback being taught through the radio. Why is it such a problem or why are we so slow at adapting visual means of technology to do exactly the same process to teach children remotely using a single teacher teaching multiple pupils in the way that Jack Brodie has just asked? We have a facility called GO, and we continue to build capacity within GO to have it as a national internet. We would want more teachers and more young people to use GO. You can access that on your phone now, and you can engage with it in a variety of ways. Maybe that's what I'm saying, but I'm not talking about people accessing a website on their phone. What I'm talking about is that there's a set lesson that a teacher using his very high-quality skills, for example PSL, is teaching a lesson that children in various schools across the country can sit down and access. At 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning, the lesson will be X, and those children can access that lesson. Well, that facility is not in that format, but people could tie into a GO meet, a GO event at a prescribed time. If you're looking at a national centre for provision of a range of lessons, that's not on the agenda. It's in part that education authorities have the responsibility for the provision of education, and the buy-in to the use of GO operates as in when schools, classrooms, teachers, young people make use of GO. It's a disperse system, and it's not a centralised system in that respect. Okay, I don't think that's very satisfactory, but I'm going to ask other members of the panel their view on this. Brian, you want to come in? Good to say. Certainly one school that was mentioned earlier is of good practice with St Markets, which is one that I've been involved in, which isn't a resource-based but mainstream provision. Certainly technology was used there as core not only to make books accessible, so we would sign pretty much all the books into BSL, and that made them a resource that's being used in different schools and nurseries within Fife. It was also a way to develop the children within the mainstream schools language skills, so we would use, for instance, software such as ClickR and so on, and incorporate video into that, and that allowed the development of the children within the schools signing skills. I think that there's the option of some way of sharing those types of resources should be certainly explored, because I'm sure that we're not the only authorities into making resources, but looking at the types of technology would also be worth investigating. Finally, I think that one of the things that does that is slightly moving away from sign, exclusively from sign, but subtitling. I think that a whole range of issues around making video resources and DVD resources within schools making them subtitle friendly. Very briefly, you don't mind. Sure, no worries. I think that a Scottish Centre Centre has an example of good practice. They have put a lot of BSL resources linked to the curriculum. They have a glossary for all the technical signs, but they also have video clips of science experiments, etc., which are linked to the curriculum. We could look there as a starting point to see what kind of resources we could be creating, because I think that it would be wonderful for deaf children to be able to go on the internet and access resources in BSL that are linked to the curriculum. Voice 2 to text software within schools would be very useful for subtitling, for teachers, as they speak, to have the subtitles coming up. That would allow better access, too, and that would be something that I would like to see a bit of research into. Okay, thank you. Liam, you wanted to come back to mainstreaming. Yeah, just very briefly. Eileen, you touched on it in answer to an earlier question, and in terms of the written evidence, you kick it off with a statement that is well documented that deaf young people, individually placed in mainstream schools, often feel isolated and you want to make that link in terms of the prevalence of mental health. It came up in the panel discussion last week, as well. I do not think that it was necessarily in opposition to the presumption of mainstreaming, but the way in which the application of that presumption works does not necessarily always recognise the needs at each age and stage of those with a sensory impairment. Rachel O'Neill went as far as to say that it was actually doing a disservice to deaf children in some senses. I was just interested to know from the panel this week whether there is a feeling that that is the case and if there are things that we can maybe do to modify that presumption to make sure that at each age and stage it is working in the best interests, either of the visually impaired or the hearing impaired. Local authorities have to look at the provision for deaf children and it is not one size fits all. Deaf children are individuals and they need choices, but I would like to see each local authority or local authorities working together, if they are smaller local authorities, to provide a resource-based provision for deaf children. For the reasons, for the isolation for creating a realistic opportunity to teach sign language to a good level to their hearing peers, that would decrease isolation. Providing access to deaf role models, having deaf people coming to the school, maybe having deaf teachers there, having English taught effectively, having skilled staff, the advantages of having the deaf have watched children in those spaces and realised from my experience how important it is that they have a deaf peer group to communicate with. In primary school, children tend to communicate more physically, they run around and it comes to a secondary situation. It is a much more language-based community interaction in relationships. At that time, deaf children have issues in the playground, keeping up with their hearing peers. Having a deaf group is good for their deaf identity, although they do not see themselves as only a deaf person. I feel that there are so many advantages to the resource-based approach and I would like to see local authorities offering that as a very positive option for deaf children. I feel that if deaf people are not listening to deaf people, they have been telling us this for a long time that individually placed in mainstream schools has not had a positive experience. I do feel that the people who are making the decisions of where children are going are maybe not really listening and the option of the resource space is not to go to your mainstream school, but if it does not work for you, there is a wee bit of wait until you fail there before you go to the resource space, rather than having the resource space as the positive first option. It is difficult to take children away from their local community. I am not saying that you should do that just to know that. The evidence is there that deaf children feel more positive, have a positive identity and have the skills there within that resource space for them to attain more effectively. There is no doubt a real benefit in meeting other children with visual impairments, sharing their life experience and doing things together, but it is not a one-size-fits-all. There are all kinds of visual impairments ranging from the totally blind to those with low vision and they can mix to different degrees and with different degrees of success in a mainstream environment. There is probably an argument with visual impaired children where possible, given the opportunity to mix with other children with visual impairment, but it does not necessarily mean that for most of the time they are not in their mainstream school with the appropriate support. I come back to this whole confidence thing. It is about the confidence to be included and to claim your part of the activities of the school, as well as being given your part and the activities of the school. The point about the earlier the intervention in the support that could be in place, the more likely that that then lasts through the school. Very much. The rest of the children in the school get used to accommodating the child with a visual impairment as part of the group. I know that that gets challenging when people move from primary to secondary because the way that social groups of children operate becomes different again. I think that there is a need to be aware that a child who has become very settled towards the end of primary actually faces a great big challenge on transition. There has always been a spectrum of support and there should remain a spectrum of support, but in many ways it is parents that drive the change away certainly from the days where there were high numbers in resource spaces and so on. I am there supporting families from at the very beginning sharing the news and one of the first questions is one of the one of the most common questions is will they go to their local school. Now resource spaces as I said have historically always been there and they haven't always been a driver coming back to the purpose of the meeting of raising attainment. As I said, it is about different models of support. I will give you an example just to to put a point towards the notion that it is always isolation. Incent markets where there was an inspection the inspectors fed back to the head teacher and they actually commented on an issue that happened in the lunch hall and there was the deaf child and she was with two of her friends and we were all signing and the deaf child got up to put her tray into the waste park and the two kids continued on their conversation in sign. So we can have success. It's about models of supports, about finding things that work as much as about placement or devaluing the role of the resource spaces. Very, very quick to say that it is quite often to do with choice that young people want to be in a mainstream secondary with their peers and they're very much supported to be part of that school community. That can change. We consult with young people, we have friendship groups and when we asked children with sensory impairment, the younger children were very keen and they meet at Isabelle Mayer school together, they're brought together as a group regularly. Older pupils have attended more as buddies but they're now expressing more interest and we have Corey House, a separate house, a life skills house so that young people are going, the plans are that older young people will meet there. We have a teacher of the deaf who is himself deaf and that has been a tremendous person to have in the team to raise awareness of deafness and another sensory impairment. I think that we need to remember with inclusion that by having children with sensory impairment in schools alongside mainstream colleagues with other additional support needs, we increase the understanding of additional support needs across the board for when they go out into the world of work. Aileen, sorry, I'm going to have to stop you there because we're really running out of time and I've got a couple of members who want to ask some questions. Siobhan. I want to start with the Education Scotland submission that we had. I was concerned about the conclusion, it's quite an understatement, but there's six paragraphs here and I've read out the start of a few of them. Education authorities in schools need to do, education authorities and schools also need to track. There is also a need for education authorities in schools to continue to improve. What is there a need for educational Scotland to do? What we need to do is to ensure that some of those messages of the data are passed in through the system, that people take account of that within an approach that looks to boost the inclusiveness that takes account of those additional support needs, but has our schools as places where it's not a barrier to your learning from your social background, your disability, your gender. There's a story to be told in there that we haven't distributed enough. I think that Education Scotland can provide platforms for teachers to come together to consider what they need from us in order to benefit their delivery of the system. That includes taking account of the one plus two languages BSLs placed within that and giving a greater boost to aspects of communication within literacy in English. BSL is part of a diverse language policy in our schools. I think that there's a boost that we can also do for children and young people to give them perhaps not just a voice but a way and means of expressing those voices within their reviews, in their classrooms and that they have a degree of ownership and responsibility of how they deal with their support. I think that we have a challenging agenda ourselves as well as schools and authorities. There is more that we can do, yes. I appreciate you putting that in evidence, because that was missing from the written submission. I'll move on to the independent living skills and the habilitation skills that we spoke about earlier. I asked in the panels last week about how important those are, and that's come up in evidence already this morning. I don't wish to go over that, but I wish to see how far curriculum for excellence can be used in that capacity in order to give people independent living skills. Is there other models that we should be looking at? Is it simply curriculum for excellence or is there something else out there that is working that we should be looking at for further evidence? I think that curriculum for excellence is an excellent framework for taking forward deaf children. It has the flexibility, and it allows us to build a curriculum that is relevant to deaf children. There is personalisation, choice, and that's important, because the curriculum for deaf children will not be the same as a curriculum for hearing children with respect to English language, with respect to deaf studies and all those things. In lots of ways, curriculum for excellence is a good framework to meet the needs of deaf children, and I don't think that it holds any barriers to that. One problem, possibly, is that curriculum for excellence really encourages active types of learning. Classroom environments are different now than they were in the past. That's a good thing, but children are working more in groups, with more discussion within classrooms, so they tend to become more noisier environments, which is an issue for our children. We have to look at that environment and say, well, how can we make it accessible for our deaf children now that we do have technology? We have things such as roaming mics for children working in groups that can make use of a microphone. The deaf child's got the radio aid, but those things have to be available, they have to be used, teachers need to know how to use them and feel confident about using them. Adaptations, possibly if there is group working, a deaf child within a group, you might say that you are working in this group, but you can move to this quiet area with your group until you have access. I don't think that curriculum for excellence holds any barriers, but we have to look at that. It creates a classroom environment that can be quite challenging for deaf children. Does anyone just agree with that? Richard, do you want to add something? I disagree with that. I just say that curriculum for excellence has been great for VI education because it accentuates quite a few of the things that we have always needed to accentuate in VI education, and it works across the whole school. It is absolutely fantastic. We are not really coming in with suggestions for different curriculae of that kind, but simply in terms of building in habilitation and daily living skills. For any child who has special needs that affect their life skills, I think that there is probably a need to consider that as being part of the school curriculum for them. You spoke about what is happening in Fife and how the videos in using BSL and various others. That is an example of good practice that is happening in Fife that we were not aware of until today. How do we get that good practice and the sharing of good practice? How do we become better at that? That is a very good question. Potentially there might be a role, as I said, for the Scottish sensory centre. It has generally been a body that is quite respected throughout Scotland. It might be looking to see how resources are about highlighting not just the resources that are being made but the technology that is being used to make them. Maybe the SSC could hold more satellite-type courses throughout Scotland. One of the things that I have been suggested in the past, when we met one of the Scottish civil servants, was the interrelation not to video but to interrelation in relation to audiology equipment being used. It was maybe trying to use the skills and good practice and then to have road shows in different parts of Scotland, because it is quite challenging if you are an authority up in the highlands to come down to a course in Edinburgh. That might be more use of web-based learning and things like that. The Royal Blind School has always done some outward-facing work and has always been on the end of the phone for teachers and children with a visual impairment who have a particular issue. They would phone into the school and ask, and we would be happy to help with that. That has always been a kind of quiet support that we have done. We are changing the way we go about that this year and launching a new thing called the learning hub, which will complement the work that the SSC does with e-learning seminars and other things. It is very much about basic access to the curriculum for a child with a visual impairment. It is going to be a resource that a teacher who has a child with a visual impairment in their class can hook up with, both on the net and in terms of real life and consulting. We can go out there and support. I would like to ask about adaptions. We have discussed them quite a bit with regard to technology and its use for BSL users, but what is the most cost-effective adaption or the best way forward for the visually impaired? We have mentioned before that there is a spectrum of need that needs to differ according to the individual pupil. For those who are braille users, to be able to have access to your computer through a braille interface is very valuable indeed. For those with low vision, particularly magnifiers, and magnifiers come in all kinds of different kinds and sizes, but depending on what your sight need is and how it is best helped, you have a magnifier that sits on your desk, you can put written things under it and it will come up with the colour differentiation that helps your own sight loss, but you also have magnifiers whereby you can see what is on display at the front of the class, displayed next to you on your own desk. Simple things like having enough desk space so that you can have those aids available to you that is close to a power point and in terms of designing a school to enable that to happen and that the right colour contrasts are there so that the child can orient themselves in the environment. A lot of it is really quite basic, but things that an architect will not necessarily think of when they are designing a building. Do you see the colour variations? That was something that I was totally unaware of until I was given one of those pairs of glasses with a constituent who I have always known was visually impaired and it was years ago I was a councillor at the time and I was actually doing an assessment of the local authority building and I tripped over the stairs because there was no differentiation in the colour and it was a simple case of just some pain was enough to make the difference and also the council didn't think someone six foot three would have a visual impairment so I battered my head off a TV screen but apart from that I understand a lot of those can be quite simple as well. There can be quite simple solutions to some of the issues. Yeah, that's right, but it really is a matter of getting the tooling right for the child and that's where we come back to this question of qualification and learning on the part of the staff to be able to actually tailor what the child needs to their actual need. I just want to finish one question to Mr Wart and it goes back to the statistics and in your submission you say that the national average of attending higher and further education is 64 per cent and it's 68 per cent for both hearing and visually impaired. Effectively you're talking about the higher outcomes for those with a hearing or visual impairment in terms of positive destinations. I'm just wondering if that's helpful or rather in fact just throws up a fog in terms of the reality of what's happening to young people who have either a visual or a hearing impairment. I'm looking at the figures that we have, for example, the average tariff score of deaf pupils compared with all pupils at S4 by SIMD at every single level. I don't know whether you can see that but every single level deaf pupils are further behind than the average of all Scottish pupils and the same with in terms of SCQF level 2 right up to SCQF level 7 or better. You've got visual impairment, hearing impairment and no ASN and on every level they are behind at the beginning just marginally behind I would say but at the end only achieving a third of the outcomes of those pupils without either a visual or a hearing impairment. I'm concerned and this is the question that I want to ask you that the figures that you've given about positive destinations and attending college effectively is in fact masking the reality of the situation for young people who have a visual or a hearing impairment. We were told yesterday about children being, and I used the word that was used, dumped in college courses. It's been just effectively being put in a college course and they sit there and they do another college course and another college course and another college course, so eventually it just becomes, they have to eventually leave college but basically it's not really a positive destination is it? I think there's two points in there. One, the gap remains, it's narrowing, so it's an improving picture over the past few years. I think we have to give ourselves credit for that in Scotland, it's an improving picture but it's still too wide and you've marked out that kids getting in the qualifications for higher education are much lower level than the average. The positive destinations for most young people can be a positive outcome because within the senior phase now and moving into FE there are routes into higher education through that. It tends to be the issue that you've described of, it's almost a war on place for a period of time, that tends to be for those with more complex needs. Going beyond FE and going beyond that positive destination, which might just be for a year, what happens after that for those with complex needs and for some of those with disabilities in general in terms of employment, has been flagged up within the developing the young workforce, the wood report education for all, across disabilities, ethnic minorities, gender and care leavers, as an area that needs, if not unacceptable, further improvement. That raises the question against businesses and employment. I think that there's more that the public sector could do in terms of supported employment and opportunities for those with disabilities, both national government and local authorities. That's a challenge for us all. The FE picture can be masking those that are, to use your term, dumped, but it can also be that that is a positive destination. It is something that young people with disabilities just need a bit longer time to work through and don't just leave at fifth year to go to university and move on, so there can be a positive story in there. I have to hasten to add that the term that was used by somebody who was clearly frustrated by the situation that they felt their own child was facing. Thank you very much for that. While accepting that positive destinations can be FE and, of course, can be an incredibly positive destination for many pupils, I think that clearly there is an issue, as you so rightly said yourself, going beyond that into employment, clearly the employment rates of those with a visual impairment or a hearing impairment are very, very different from the average, so clearly something still—let's put it this way—there's still a lot of work to do. On that point, I thank you all very much for attending this morning. We're very grateful for you coming along and giving your time to the committee. Next week we will take evidence from the Scottish Government on this area, and I'm sure we'll all look forward to that. Thank you very much. I close the meeting.