 The next item of business today is a debate on motion 8558, in the name of John Swinney, on presumption of mainstreaming. I would invite all members who wish to speak in this debate to press their request to speak buttons now, and I call on John Swinney to speak to and move the motion in his name. Presiding Officer, a commitment to and a belief in inclusive education has underpinned the approach to education policy and legislation in this Parliament since 2000. The Standards and Scotland Schools Act was one of the first pieces of legislation ever passed by this Parliament, and it featured a requirement that education for all children should be provided in mainstream schools except in prescribed exceptional circumstances. Those provisions commenced in 2002 and their importance cannot be overstated. They created an entitlement for children and young people whose parents previously had often had to fight simply for the right of their children to be educated at all. The presumption to mainstream, as it has become known, firmly closed the door on the institutionalisation of pupils who needed support and recognised the value to society, to communities and to families of pupils learning in their own communities wherever possible, but allowing those who needed support to receive it. We now have the first generation of young people who have experienced mainstream education as a consequence of the rights that were established under that legislation, and we have seen the fruits of the involvement of those young people in our society and in our communities where they have been able to obtain their education. In 2004, this Parliament went even further than the 2000 legislation and created a truly inclusive approach to education through the groundbreaking additional support for learning act. The act fundamentally changed the way in which children and young people are supported in schools. It moved away from a model of medical deficit to a legislative framework that focused on barriers to children's and young people's learning. It recognised that children and young people experience barriers as a result of a range of reasons, including as a result of disability or health needs, but it recognised that family circumstances, learning environment and social and emotional factors can play a part in creating barriers, not all of the long term, to a child learning effectively in school. The key point of the legislation is that children and young people have rights to have those needs identified, assessed and they should receive the support that they need when they need it to overcome anything that gets in the way of their learning. It is worth recalling that both of the acts to which I have referred were put in place by our predecessors in government. Since coming to power in 2007, this Government has continued to embed its commitment to inclusive education in policy and in legislation. We have updated and revised the additional support for learning legislation and the associated guidance to ensure that the act is effectively implemented first in 2009 and again last year. The wider policies that underpin school education in Scotland, curriculum for excellence, getting it right for every child and our most recent developments on raising attainment for all and the Scottish attainment challenge, in addition to our educational reforms, all focus on the need to tackle inequality to create a fairer Scotland to put each and every child's needs and interests at the heart of the educational system. What that demonstrates is the difference that this Parliament has made by its dialogue around those subjects and the difference that Parliament can continue to make when it comes together around shared values and works together to make change happen in a relatively short time span. We should not forget the difference that we can and we do make to the people of Scotland as a consequence of that concerted all-party action in this Parliament. At its heart, inclusive education does not just tolerate diversity but, importantly, it promotes and celebrates that diversity within our society. It allows all children and young people to develop an understanding and recognition of differences within our society. That contributes to the development of an increasingly inclusive, empathetic and more just society. It also affords children and young people the opportunity to be part of a community, boosting their emotional wellbeing and aiding the development of social skills. Inclusive education also needs diversity and provision. There needs to be a range of educational settings available to ensure that children learn in the environment that best meets their needs. In practice, that means mainstream schools, special schools and units within mainstream schools and flexible placements. I want to be clear that there will be no change to the legislation on mainstreaming in Scotland. This Government will neither commit to a system where all children must learn in mainstream schools, nor to a system where all children with additional support needs must learn in special schools. We will continue to have legislation that maintains the presumption to mainstream education and allows those whose needs are best met in specialist provision or a mix to have that objective fulfilled. There is a wide range of positive examples of support provisions across Scotland. I saw for myself yesterday in Grangemouth at the opening of the Carren Grange High School, an absolutely fantastic facility that provides special needs education for young people across a range of different circumstances and experiences. What was striking to me in the development that has been taken forward at Carren Grange High School in partnership between the Scottish Government and Falkirk Council is the creation of a learning environment that reflects the needs and the requirements of young people with special educational needs and deploys those services in a world-class educational facility that creates tremendous opportunities for young people. It was also very clear that education was being delivered in a context of very strong staff commitment and staff provision to ensure that adequate resources were in place to meet the needs of individual young people. The settings of education will vary, but, fundamentally, the Government operates on the principle that we should deliver mainstream education where we possibly can and exceptional provision has to be made available within our society as part of that proposition. We have a clear agenda for education-focused on creating a world-class education system that delivers excellence and equity for all children and young people. That does not mean that everything has to be the same and experienced in the same way, but that children and young people should have equal opportunities to reach their full potential. The approach that we are taking is making a difference. We have more children identified and receiving additional support in schools. Children and young people who need support for any reason, short or long-term, have been recognised and supported in schools across Scotland. We are supporting children and young people who, until a few years ago, would not have received support. Support for the bereaved, those from armed forces families, those from whose parents are imprisoned and, of course, able pupils are now commonplace alongside those who would traditionally have received support for autism, dyslexia, sensory impairment and pupils with disabilities. The outcomes for children and young people with additional support needs have been and continue to improve. Some of the data in that respect is as follows. Since 2010-11, attendance for pupils with additional support needs has continued to improve in primary, secondary and special schools, with a total percentage improvement of 1.1 per cent. The overall rate of exclusion for all pupils has more than half since 2006-07, due to the continued focus by schools and education authorities to build on and improve their relationship with children and young people, most at risk of exclusion in their learning communities. However, for pupils who have an additional support need, more needs to be done as those pupils continue to experience a higher rate of exclusion from school. That is unacceptable and more needs to be done to reduce those numbers. Children and young people with additional support needs are gaining more and better qualifications than they ever have. 60.7 per cent of 2014-15 school leavers with additional support needs left school with one or more qualifications at SCQF level 5 or better. 84.6 per cent of 2014-15 school leavers with ASN left school with one or more qualifications at SCQF level 4 or better. That is all leading to positive outcomes, with more young people with additional support needs gaining positive destinations than ever before. 86.9 per cent of pupils with additional support needs have a positive destination. 19 per cent of pupils with additional support needs went on to higher education, 38.6 per cent went on to further education and 28.6 per cent went on to employment, training or volunteering. Those achievements are testament to the role played by a professional teaching workforce and the wide range of practitioners and professionals who provide the support that children need in their learning. Nor should we forget the role played by parents and families to support their children's learning and often the role they need to play in order to ensure that their children's rights are respected and that they get the education that they are entitled to in a setting that best meets their needs. We all know of constituents and sometimes also family members and friends who are parents. Although we can and should reflect on all that we have done in the past to create and maintain inclusive education and how that has contributed to our real shift in attitudes and achievements today, we must also acknowledge that there is more that needs to be done. The recent evidence to Parliament's Education and Skills Committee demonstrates that the right decisions are not being made for all children and that for some inclusive education is still a policy rather than their everyday experience. We remain committed to mainstreaming as a central pillar of our inclusive approach to education. The Scottish approach to inclusion is already world-leading. Our legislative and policy commitments are among the most extensive in the world. However, we must work to improve the experience of inclusion for all pupils if we are to deliver on the promise of such an ambitious framework. That is why today I am announcing that the Government will consult on guidance on the presumption of mainstreaming. That guidance aims to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and day-to-day experience to ensure that local authorities have the information and the support that they need to guide their decision making in applying the presumption of mainstream education and looks to encourage a child-centred approach to making decisions around placement. As the implementation of the presumption of mainstreaming requires a commitment to inclusive practice and for those approaches to be effective, the guidance clearly links inclusive practice with the presumption throughout and includes key features of inclusion and guidance on how to improve inclusive practice in schools. The consultation offers an opportunity to shape the finalised guidance. We will listen carefully and encourage all those who have a contribution to make to express their views as part of the consultation exercise. In response to the Education and Skills Committee report on additional support for learning, I recognise that the committee wished to act on the evidence that it had heard. I therefore committed to commission independent research into the experiences of children, young people, parents, school staff, including support staff and education authorities and their partners in relation to additional support for learning. I can also announce that this research process will now start and will run concurrently with the consultation on the draft guidance. The intention is to conduct the research in early 2018 and publish a final research report by the end of the summer. Its findings will be used to inform future policy development and reporting so that we continue to renew and refresh our commitment to inclusive education in the future, as we have done throughout this Parliament's lifetime. There is also work that we can do now to improve the experience of inclusive education for children and young people. I have already highlighted, Presiding Officer, the crucial role played by teachers, support staff and other staff in mainstream, primary and secondary schools, units and special schools all across Scotland. They are key to ensuring that children and young people's experience of education in the classroom and in the whole school is truly inclusive. They need to know that they have access to resources that support their professional practice and which give them confidence to successfully support children's learning. We therefore intend to work with Education Scotland to develop inclusive education resources to help to support head teachers and support staff in their work, and that will be available early in the new year. An inclusive approach to education also requires that each and every child and young person should be involved in their own education and have a voice to shape their experience. They should be provided with the support that they need to reach their learning potential. One of the aims of the draft guidance will be to give children's parents and carers their place in the decision making process. From January 2018, children who are aged 12 to 15 will be empowered by the extension of their rights in respect of additional support for learning in school education. We will continue to listen to the voices of young people. Our inclusion ambassadors provide a great way for us to do that, and responses from the consultation on the guidance and the research will help to further shape our future actions. I have set out how far we have come since the establishment of this Parliament. From the recent past, where children were treated in a way that often separated them from their peers and their communities, to today, where we understand the importance of inclusion for not only children themselves but for the wider community. I have been and continue to be clear that this Government's ambition is for all children and young people to be able to reach their full potential, including those who experience barriers to their learning. I have restated our commitment to inclusive education, but I know that this is a commitment that is shared across this chamber. We should not lose sight of the fact that not all that we have achieved for children and young people with additional support needs has been achieved without listening to each other and indeed learning from each other's perspectives in this debate. I hope that the next steps that I have set out today will help us further in our journey towards delivering inclusive education in practice for all children and young people. The education of our children and young people is of paramount importance to us all. We all want children and young people to have equitable access to a quality education that meets their needs and which helps them to achieve their full potential. I move the motion in my name. I warmly welcome the Scottish Government's initiatives that have been announced this afternoon. It is not an easy debate—I think that we can all acknowledge that—but nonetheless, it is an issue that has huge significance for families across Scotland and not just those with vulnerable children. As the cabinet secretary has rightly said, there is a historical context to this. Those of us of a certain age remember very well a time when many pupils with very special needs found it very difficult indeed to be seen as deserving of any special focus in their own school, local authority or national government policy. Happily, I think that we have come a very long way since that time, and I think that we should take this opportunity to note at this stage that one of the key attributes of Scottish education that was flagged up by the OECD report was one of very supportive inclusion. I think that that is a very important point to remember. I think that we can all agree that inclusion is so important for exactly the reasons that the cabinet secretary has set out, and that we must do all that we can to ensure that inclusion continues to be a meaningful engagement and experiences in our schools, rather than just being on the school role in a mainstream school, because I think that there is a very important difference there. However, at the same time as there has been a lot of very good progress, there has also been increasing complexity. I think that it is this complexity that is now challenging us to revisit the policy. I would argue that the following issues have led to some complication. Firstly, and it is a matter that the cabinet secretary referred to himself, especially in the last decade, there has been a much better detection of pupils who have specific problems. Obviously, there has been a huge increase in the number of pupils who have been identified with the ASN, including those who have very complex needs. That current definition, when it was first used, there were 98,500 pupils who were identified with ASN. In the last five years, that has risen by 73 per cent to 170,300. Although I think that it is a very good news about the detection level, clearly that puts additional pressure on our schools. That said, I think that there are key issues about the data, how effectively that accurate data is collected and then used in the relevant manner. We are very conscious of the widespread variation in the count across different local authorities. In North Lanarkshire, for example, just 6 per cent of mainstream school population was identified with ASN, whereas in Aberdeenshire it was 35 per cent. That flagged up to me that I think that there were differences in approaches and perhaps that is something that we have to look at in much greater detail, because that data is crucial to informing policy well. For completeness and analysis of statistics, would Lysmouth also accept that within the most expanded number of young people who are identified with special needs, there is a very broad range of the requirements and support that they would require from the very minor level of intervention to a very significant and acute level of intervention to support their needs? Yes, absolutely. I hope that one of the progressions that we can make about the accuracy of the data and the relevant application of that is exactly that fact. When we first looked at that in the education committee, I think that there were slightly disturbing differences across local authorities about the interpretation of that. I think that there is very good news on that front, but it is something that the Scottish Children and Services Coalition points to a great deal about the identification of those additional support needs. That sometimes demands the greater diversity that the cabinet secretary is looking for, but it is not always deliverable under the structures that we have within the current local authorities. They make the point that the average local authority spend on AS pupils has fallen by 11 per cent in the same time that that percentage increase has taken place. I had a conversation with Mark MacDonald, the minister, about the issue of level 9 qualifications when it came to looking after some of our vulnerable children. That was a good conversation and he was very responsive to some issues that I raised back in February about the staffing, the appropriateness of staffing and whether it is always necessary, in some cases, to have additional support for learning to have level 9 and above. I hope that we can continue that discussion, because I think that that has some effect on the qualification of our staff, but also on some of the costs that are incurred by some of our special schools. I hope that we can continue that discussion. There is a huge issue about the financial constraints on councils, which have obviously been combined with teacher shortages. We should be in no doubt whatsoever that that is for some pupils who should be in special schools for very genuine reasons to be mainstreamed perhaps for too long a period. We can all point to constituents who have these difficulties. I do worry of the constituents who come to me sometimes that the reason given about where the school is going to make a judgment is taken on a financial basis rather than an educational one. I think that we have to do something to try and reverse that, because, as the cabinet secretary rightly said, it is about the educational interests of each child that matters so much, not just the financial circumstances. I add at some point that I think that we have some fantastic special schools who are dealing with children who have the greatest complex needs. This is a debate perhaps more for Derek Mackay than it is for education ministers, but we have to be very careful that we do not penalise them with the proposed discussions that we are having about business rates, because I think that the impact of that could be very serious to some special schools. I make a plea on behalf of small independent schools who would feel that very strongly in some cases. The cabinet secretary knows some of the schools that I am talking about in Mid Scotland and Fife who make the point that they may face closure if they were to face those increasing costs. The key issue is to weigh up the overall benefits to the child's education and that child's personal development. The current legislation, which all parties have supported, makes plain that there should be presumption to mainstream, but it is very supportive of that. It obviously spells out the three categories where that might not be appropriate. Generally speaking, I think that most stakeholders are content, but I think that the argument that runs at the problem lies not with the legislation so much, but with how it is actually interpreted across local authorities. I think that perhaps we should take advice from many in the sector. People like Kenny Graham, who is head of education at Folkland house school, has flagged up very firmly that he thinks that it is about the interpretation of the legislation and perhaps the guidance as to how we move forward. In the whole policy area, there is a central dilemma about how to balance the very strong social reasons for keeping a child in mainstream school with the best educational interests of the child. Those two do not always fit very neatly together and neither do the best educational interests of other children within the peer group, especially when there is pressure on teaching resources. As a former teacher, I know exactly what some of those pressures can mean and some of the emotion that surrounds the decisions that have to be made. That is not an easy area of policy. I said at the beginning of my speech that it is a critical one when it comes to supporting our young people and ensuring that every one of them is given the support that they need. We should not be misled by the false premise that equity is necessarily complemented by mainstream and I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary endorsing that. It is patently clear that we could do a great grave disservice to some of our most vulnerable children if we did make that conclusion. The challenge is to restructure our resources accordingly. To that end, we are very happy to support the Government's motion this afternoon. We are also very happy to support the Labour one. I close by moving the amendment in my name. The cabinet secretary is absolutely right to place this consultation today in the development of the policy and legislative framework on disability issues generally and additional needs education specifically across almost 20 years and different administrations. I am not sure how world leading we are in this but we have certainly come a very long way. When this Parliament began in 1999, far too many of Scotland's disabled people still lived in long-stay hospital-style accommodation, not just excluded from mainstream education but from the community altogether. It is quite hard to imagine now that that was considered the norm. I think that the ability to live, participate and learn in the community is a right that I think is supported across this chamber and indeed across wider society. One of the key early moments in this regard in this Parliament was the first learning disability strategy and its title in particular is the same as you. For me, that title encapsulates the principle that we strive for. We have to disabuse ourselves of the idea that people with particular needs—physical or otherwise—are asking for something special and extra. The truth is that they want the same things as we all do—to live freely, to have every possible chance to make the most of their own lives. Their right to a home, to healthcare and yes to an education is no less valid than anyone else's. No matter how well we think we have done, we have to acknowledge that we have much further to go, especially in areas that are perhaps like employment and, yes, in education too. A presumption of mainstreaming in schools is exactly where the principle of the same as you takes us in education. However, as the Education Secretary to his credit says in his introduction to the guidance, the measure of that cannot simply be presence in a mainstream school. It is the opportunities in our schools, not just the desk in the classroom that we are obliged to open up to all. I have used this example before in the debate, but it encapsulates a lot about the issue that we are discussing. Many years ago, I taught science at Gracemount secondary in the city, and it shared a campus in those days with Cames school for the partially sighted. The idea was that Cames pupils attended some mainstream classes, as well as specialist provision. One of the models that Mr Swinney talked about in his speech today and in the document. I had in my science class one or two pupils with particular needs. In recognition of those circumstances, class sizes were low, 14 or so. I was able to ensure that I gave the extra support that was required. Quite often, I was supported by a specialist teacher from Cames school in my classroom. It was mainstreaming, and it worked. As a teacher, a young teacher starting out, I felt a professional pride in our success. In the early 80s, I spent a couple of years away working abroad, and when I returned, things had changed. As now was the time of cuts. Instead of one or two, there were three or four, sometimes five, partially sighted pupils in my classes. Those classes were all at maximum class size of 21 for a practical subject. There was no specialist support. The truth was that there was no space to give additional needs pupils any additional support at all. They were at a desk in my classroom, but not included in my class. I felt guilty about that, but there was pressure on us—curricular change, new exams and bigger classes all around. Mainstreaming might be much more mainstream as an idea today, but resources are still at a premium. Since 2010, we have seen a 153 per cent increase in pupils who are identified as having additional support needs. That cannot all be explained by the inclusion of temporary or low-level needs in the numbers. At the same time, ASN support staff have dropped by 8 per cent, and learning support teachers have dropped by 13 per cent. The Scottish Children's Services Coalition have calculated that spending per pupil on additional support for learning was £4,276 in 2012-13, but only £3,817 in 2015-16, so more need but less provision. Clearly, more responsibility for ASL will be falling squarely on teachers in general, but enable us, from their surveys, that 98 per cent of the education workforce do not feel that teacher training adequately prepares them for that role. It is 30 years since I failed those partially sighted pupils in Gracemount, but we seem to be making some of the same mistakes again now. Mark McDonald has made a point, but he will have heard the Deputy First Minister highlighting the significant improvement in outcomes for those children with additional support needs. When he characterises the concept of failing those pupils, how does he reconcile that with the clear improvement that there has been in outcomes for the very children that he is describing? That is very much to the credit of our teachers and additional support needs workers who remain in the system, but we cannot ignore the fact, for example, that enable will tell us that 52 per cent of pupils with learning disabilities do not feel that they are getting the right support at school. How they feel about themselves being supported is pretty critical, because we cannot, in all conscience, properly rededicate ourselves to the principle of a presumption of mainstreaming or properly endorse the legal framework and administrative framework of delivering inclusion if we are not prepared to acknowledge and face up to the reality of the resource requirements to make this happen properly. To do so is to disrespect the everyday lived experience of teachers, parents and above all those pupils who say that they do not feel that they are receiving the support that they need. I do not pretend that the resource challenge is easy, not at all, but we cannot pretend that it does not exist. I do not think that this is in the end a party political point that I am trying to make. It is almost a moral one, an obligation on all of us, because if we do not acknowledge the problems then we are deceiving ourselves about the virtue of our commitment to inclusiveness. If we will, the noble end of the same-as-you principle, but we are not prepared to will the mundane means to achieve it, then we are simply meeting our own needs to feel that we are doing the right thing while failing thousands of families and children who are looking to us to do the right thing for them, to simply really include them. I move to the open debate. As we have heard so far today, the presumption of mainstreaming is now well entrained in Scottish educational discourse, but it was not always like that. We talked today about putting the child at the centre but the political and conversely the educational culture was not always like that. In my lifetime, teachers were still able to legally belt pupils. In fact, in the last school that I taught in, a framed toss adorned the safarum walls. In emergency, break glass read the warning below. When we talk about inclusive education, about meeting the needs of all, we should also be cognisant of the importance of school culture. In terms of exclusion rates, the downwards trajectory is good news, but to my knowledge the Government does not currently gather records of internal exclusions. Those are the exclusions that take place under the radar, as it were, sending a pupil out of class to the cooler or to the Sin bin, as I have heard it called. I hope that the Government will consider directly collecting this data, particularly from our secondary schools, as part of this consultation. I will give you an example now of a pupil that I taught. In first year, Jamie was the class clown. He mucked about, he got the laughs, he was often sent out. Jamie also had a pretty complex range of additional support needs, but he loved the debating part of modern studies. He was bright and he was switched on. On the writing part, however, Jamie was not convinced. He struggled and he struggled, and then he would give up. Jamie's writing capabilities as an S1 pupil were where he would expect a primary one to be. I would do my best as a class teacher with 30 to 12 heroes in front of me, but it was not easy. The class had a learning support assistant, but there were a number of other children in that class with their own additional support needs. Often, I would pass Jamie sitting outside the deputy head's office. He would have a textbook and a jotter in front of him doodling away. I would ask him why he was out of class. Invariably, he would have had a run-in with a teacher. To Jamie, it was a kick to get sent out, to see his classmates' faces light up with glee to challenge the natural power imbalance that exists in a classroom. But he got bored pretty quickly. He swung on the plastic chair outside the deputy head's office. That, in turn, would incur the wrath of teachers like me, heaven forbid, he might snap the plastic of the chair. I did not know much about Jamie's home life situation. That information was not regularly shared with classroom teachers, and it was certainly never shared by email due to its confidential nature. Instead, the gatekeepers of confidential information, the guidance department, would hurriedly ask the staff who taught Jamie to gather around at the end of break for an update. So it transpired that Jamie's parents had separated. The nature of what had happened meant that Jamie and his siblings couldn't stay at home anymore, so they were all farmed out. Some to grandparents miles away, some went into care. Teachers were only told about what happened to Jamie four weeks later. So here was this wee 12-year-old boy managing to get himself to class, kicking up for the attention in school that he just wasn't getting at home. And despite the school knowing that Jamie would sit sometimes for weeks on end outside the deputy head's office with his jotter and his textbook doodling away, deprived of his right to education, not having his additional support needs met. Presiding Officer, there wasn't a belt or a set of lines in sight. Nevertheless, Jamie was being punished. The chaos that he experienced at home contrasted with his teacher's never-ending desire for order. Jamie, true to his lived experience, kicked back in the only way he knew how. Presiding Officer, revisiting the key features of inclusion, it's difficult to see how Jamie was present in his education. Yes, he attended, but he wasn't present in any meaningful sense. He didn't come to the Halloween disco, he didn't take part in the sponsored run, he opted out wherever he could, and more often than not, the school supported him doing so. On Friday last week, I was privileged to meet Fraser and Jack, pupils at Star Primary School, just outside Marquinch in my constituency. Star Primary School is a beautiful Victorian building, but the boys showed me the leaks in the window ledges, and they did ask me to raise this directly with the Cabinet Secretary, which I have now done. The boys proudly took me around their school, they showed me where the P1s were taught, they explained to me their models of spaghetti stuck together with marsh mallows emulating the engineering of the new Queensferry crossing, they took me to the backfield and explained about all the different shrubs that they planted. Jack and Fraser were totally engaged in their learning. Contrast Jack and Fraser's experience with Jamie. Jamie had lots of different needs, he needed additional support needs, he needed a safe environment to learn in, he needed to be nurtured in a way that secondary schools often don't do. He needed his teachers to have ready access to his confidential information, allowing them to plan lessons and differentiate accordingly. Without that information, Jamie's teachers could not meet his needs. Without it, his teachers came face to face with an angry little boy, and, sure enough, he was out the door of most classrooms before he'd even sat down. I hope that the Government's consultation into the presumption of mainstreaming will look outside of our educational bubble. We need to look at health and social work, and they need to work smarter with our schools, and this is particularly the case for children who are at risk. It was the additional support for learning act, which first placed a legal obligation on our educational authorities to identify, provide and review the ASN needs of their pupils. There is now a need for our local authorities, the people who deliver education, to revisit how they meet that requirement. Do they share the information with all staff? Is it available electronically, or do they print it out in a document that is only available to the head of department? Inclusion only works if every part of the system is prepared to talk to and trust each other. Tavish Scott, followed by Bob Doris. I apologise to you and the chamber for having to leave early tonight to catch the evening plane home. One of the things that I'm doing tomorrow is visiting San Rick Jr High, the south end of Shetland, with the two MSYPs for our islands. One of the issues that we want to reflect on is what Jenny Gurruth very elegantly described there, because in addition to doing one of our normal, a bit of a word, surgeries with the senior pupils, I know they want to talk to us about mainstreaming because of this debate in Parliament today. Occasionally, I wonder if this place is relevant to what was on in the wider world. Two things made me think this week that it absolutely was in the context of today's debate, one of which is the school getting in touch to say, can you bone up on this so you know what you're talking about tomorrow. The second is that a teacher, a very old friend of mine who actually went to school with, who's taught now down here in the mainland of Scotland for years and years, phoned me up last night and said, I think there's a debate on mainstreaming in Parliament tomorrow. And then she gave me this list and I thought, well, I better do it then before the next class reunion. But she made a lot of observations, which I recognised in Ian Gray's earlier remarks about the reality. I took a lot of what John Swinney said, both the context, the international context, the manner in which this Parliament addressed this issue as he and Ian Gray and Liz Smith mentioned in their opening points, the manner in which we did it at that time in those early years. But for the very old friend who phoned me last night about it, she said, you've got to just remember the reality of what now happens in the classroom and the context was that finding staff who are available, experienced and able to hit the ground running in tackling the challenges of mainstreaming, finding time to train staff adequately, making sure that the vast majority of support workers are attached to individuals because that's the reality and it has consequences, as she put it, for the shared support across classrooms, which is now in her school very limited and I know that's a reality in many, many schools indeed. This affects teachers and, indeed, of course, support for other pupils as well. That teachers have never worked harder and neither have learning support workers across schools, but we feel, the teachers who spoke to me about this last night feels, that we have a reactive system not effective management of ASN within that mainstream. Finally, accommodation has to be right. Enough space across the school, estate or within classes for pupils to have the right access to nurture and for quiet time should they require it and many, many do. I thought that I was quite telling in terms of the practical observations of a classroom teacher who's worked in education for a long, long time and who wants this to work, believes in it, absolutely believes in the principles, believes that more needs to be done. I, too, welcome the guidance and the consultation and the research that the cabinet secretary mentioned in his opening remarks. The logic for me of that consultation and the logic of what would need to happen as part of that exercise, and I'll be very grateful if the Government can confirm that this is the case, is the recommendation that the education committee made in May when we looked at additional support for learning. We said at power 7 that the Scottish Government must also assess the extent to which a lack of resources is impacting on mainstreaming in practice and more generally on the provision of additional support for learning in mainstream education. I'm with Ian Gray, and this is not, in many ways, a political point. It's a much wider point, that's a better point than just being a political point, because it is about young people and children who, everyone from John Swinney onwards, recognises that we need to do so much more for, and that was the purpose and indeed of many of the recommendations that the education committee made back in May across this whole area in recognising that resource limitations are impacting on the processes that therefore include the number of trained ASN teachers and ASN assistants, the availability of specialists, including mental health specialists and educational psychologists, the level of resources supporting the ASN tribunal process and other appeal processes, and the availability of spaces in special schools, the point that Liz Smith was making earlier on. I would argue that those factors are increasingly important when put in the context of class sizes across Scotland. Again, the Government's own statistics perfectly recently fairly point out that class sizes in primary schools are rising, and by 2015 only 12 per cent of schools had class sizes of 18 or fewer. That has been a 153 per cent increase since 2010 in students with additional support needs, and that we've got fewer of what 1,800 or so support staff working in our schools now than we did in 2010. The context of class sizes, of teacher workload, of teacher shortages in some areas, and then of resources more generally, I think has to be part of the consultation that the Scottish Government has announced today, that the assessment of what money means and what money could do to change circumstances that are not working as well as we would all wish them to work, and the need for that exercise when it concludes to recognise both the importance of the guidance that John Swinney has illustrated today, but the importance therefore of what supports that guidance, and that is the practicalities in the classroom at this time. I hope that he will undertake to do that as part of that exercise, which in the context that he described is very welcome, but I think must address the financial issues as well. Two final points, if I may, Deputy Presiding Officer. The enable report that was produced last month, which other members already highlighted, I do think is an important contribution to this whole area of policy, not least of which, because this is Scotland's largest charity for people with disabilities, and therefore does and should be paid significant attention to both in the comments of its executive director just in that report in relation to what is practically happening, and the fact that it says in that report that 80 per cent of the education workforce says that we are not getting it right for every child. If nothing else, that is the clarion call that should be addressed by the work in this area. I call Bob Dorris to be followed by Oliver Mundell. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I have got a very strong constituency interest in that area, and in particular with a number of families and constituent working with, particularly at a primary school age and whose children are on the artistic spectrum, the challenges that they have, so in that context a lot of my comments will be made. I was delighted to see at the start of the ministerial forward from the Deputy First Minister that he said that we must improve the experience of inclusion for all pupils if we are to deliver on the promise of such an ambitious framework. Being present in a mainstream school should not be the primary marker of successful inclusion. If some parents in Glasgow were asked, they would say that Glasgow has over the years shoehorn children into a mainstream setting rather than finding the most appropriate setting. That is a reasonable thing to say. The Deputy First Minister also says that this is not statutory guidance, but it will present a vision for mainstream building on the best available evidence on inclusion approaches to education. It absolutely finds that it will not be statutory guidance, but it will be shaped during this consultation process. However, how it is adopted has to be monitored, and depending on that monitoring process, consideration has been given to put some of it on a statutory footing. I think that that is a reasonable thing to say as well. There are four key principles underpinning the guidance, and I will pick just one of them. It should outline an inclusive approach that identifies and addresses barriers to learning for all children. It is also reasonable to say that, if those principles cannot be lived up to within a mainstream setting, we have to reassess the situation. We have to reassess whether that mainstream setting is, of course, the appropriate setting for that young person in the first place or whether it can be the appropriate setting with additional appropriate supports. We have to identify when that reassessment takes place, who does that reassessment, and what criteria should be used. Anecdotally, in Glasgow, although we are not officially told, give the kid a year, first year in primary school, we will see how they get on, and then maybe we will reassess. So much damage has been done to the young people's development if that is what happens. I hope that that is not the case elsewhere. That is what I am told. There are a number of key features that are meant to signify the delivery of the key principles that are outlined in the document. Again, I will pick just one of those. It is under how young people are supported. It says that all children and young people should be supported to overcome barriers to learning and achieve their full potential, and all children and young people should be given the right help at the right time from the right people to support their wellbeing in the right place. Again, it is reasonable to say in Glasgow that, if you ask a lot of young people and their parents, they will say that that is not always happening. I am delighted that, in the Government's motion, there will be a survey and an audit and a consultation done in relation to the lived experience of young people with additional support needs in their families, including the co-face, the lived reality of the experience. That will be vitally important in matching the guidance with the reality on the ground. We have to look at the types of provisions that are appropriate. Whether it is the mainstream setting or whether it is a co-location option, it happens quite a lot of whether it is a stand-alone specialist unit. In the guidance, there is some support given to local authorities that they should follow in relation to how they come to that decision. They call it reflective questioning, and I will put some of those reflective questions on the record here. In relation to the support on offer, local authorities should be asking questions such as what steps have been taken to make sure that the needs of each child or young person have been correctly identified. How are those identified needs being adequately catered for with a different provision to provide a better outcome for this person or other young people, and how could that be achieved? There is a whole variety of reflective questions there. Again, I wonder how much those types of reflective questions are used, not just in Glasgow but across Scotland. If that guidance and the reflective questioning technique is to be meaningful, it has to be consistently applied across the country. I have mentioned that I have a number of issues in my constituency. I would like to thank families for sharing their stories with me, and I have tried to help them where I can along the way. I hope that I have done some of that. I also thank Colin Crawford, the head of inclusion in Glasgow City Council, and Andrea Reid from his team, who has been very helpful in engaging on the matter. The Glasgow City Council has 53 units and two assessment centres, a young parent support base at Whitehall, and two new provisions that are coming online at Lochhead and Govan. 1,700 to 1,800 people fluctuate slightly asn provision in Glasgow. That is a huge provision. I was concerned about whether the planning in relation to that provision in terms of the state itself, the workforce, and the assessment processes were fit for purpose. I had a meeting with Colin Crawford and Andrea Reid to discuss some of those issues. Again, I would like to thank them for the open and frank conversations that we had. It is reasonable to say that they identify some issues and have put processes in place to improve matters. That is a good news story. In relation to the modelling work in terms of some of that, they mentioned the state management, support for learning work and allocations, and the inclusion group modelling process that they have in the city. They mentioned psychological services, which will come back to us, and placement management. However, it begs the question of how, across all 32 local authorities, do we get consistent modelling work for what the SCN state should look like? I want to make this point in case I am timed out, because there is something that I really want to say after this. I think that the experience of my constituents is that young people quite often end up in stand-alone specialist units because the proper support is not put in a mainstream setting, so they demand more. If they go to a taxed unit, the proper support is maybe not put in place, so they eventually end up in a stand-alone specialist needs setting. I am never sure whether the right support is put in place at mainstream in the first place if it could have been retained within a mainstream setting. I want to run to a list of things. The guidance has to have some beef in it in relation to, I think, transitions from nursery to primary school, transitions from primary to secondary school. It has to look at the assessment process. It has to look at assessing support in the classroom. It has to look at reviewing placements. It has to look at forward plagging. It has to look at state management. It has to look at the evidence base, including—I promise that this is the final point. If you look at evidence bases in Glasgow, such as referrals to educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, if you cannot get the referral, it does not show up on the data. That is a significant issue as well. It is a big issue, but it is a huge opportunity, Presiding Officer. On that final point, we move to Oliver Mundell, followed by Jackie Baillie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would have been quite happy on this occasion to give Bob Doris the whole of my six minutes, because he is making very much the same points that I hear in my constituency mailbag. I think that there are problems that most members will see across all of our local authorities in Scotland. Today, we are all united in a common goal of meeting the educational needs of every child in Scotland as best we can, regardless of their ability and whatever support they may need. The intention behind the presumption of mainstreaming is a noble one, and it is meant to establish inclusivity as a default. However, as many others have already stated, inclusivity is far greater than just physically, including children, with additional support needs in a mainstream classroom setting. Perhaps it is because I am not of an age when I remember things being all that much different from they are now, but I look at this area and I see constituents week in, week out at my surgeries, and I hear the battles that their families are facing. I do not look upon the situation as it is now as being an entirely positive one. We have to remember, and it is not a political point that is a huge challenge. It is a huge challenge all around the world, and no one has all the answers. It is very difficult and complex to work out exactly what is best when balancing up some of the different considerations. However, there are so many children, and we must not forget it, who still do not know what mainstream education is. In my Dumfries and Galloway constituency, I see young people being farmed out across Scotland because the adequate resources are not in place to allow them to go to mainstream, or even special schools, in the region. There are young people who are being separated from their peers and their communities. I do not have all the answers or know what to say, but I see the struggles that their families face and the social and economic costs that have for everyone in our society. I am also sad to say this. I was surprised in 2017 when I reflected on my own feelings of reading enables, including in the main report. I was sad and surprised because I was not shocked. I think that to be sat here in this Parliament in 2017 and to read that and to accept that all that information is out there that so many teachers, so many parents and so many pupils are facing those experiences and that we have not found the answers is very frustrating. It shows that there is still a very long road ahead in order to ensure full inclusivity and to show that children with additional support needs can actually benefit from mainstreaming. That report found that more than half of education staff surveyed felt that children with learning disabilities were not involved in as many extracurricular activities, trips and opportunities outside of the classroom as their peers. It also said that two thirds of children with additional support needs were still being bullied in our mainstream schools. Additionally, it said that children with additional support needs might not be being officially excluded from their classroom, but informal exclusion was very common with many parents feeling unable to work due to the fear that they were going to be asked to collect their children during the working day. I must say that in my time as an MSP, one of the saddest things that I came across was a family in Annan who told me at a support group that the best day of their child's education was when they were formally excluded from school because that was the very first time that the local authority took their request for additional support seriously. That was the first time that the family felt listened to by educational professionals. I do not think that that was through any malice. It was through a lack of resource. It was through those individuals in the education department in the council being overworked. It was through the pressures that teachers were facing in the school that they did not find the time to give that child the attention that they needed. That had so much stress for families that it was so unpleasant for them that they were having to fight the system every step of the way, and they were fighting for their children's rights to a very basic level of education. If we do not do something about that, it is only going to compound the problems that we have seen with the attainment gap in the long run because it is all children in mainstream schools who are suffering when the support is not there for those who need it the most. On a more positive note, I welcome the reference that has been made to combining special schools with mainstream ones on a single site. I am very pleased, within my own Dumfriesshire constituency, to see that happening with Langlands primary school, which is getting a new building as part of the new learning campus in the town. I think that that will make a real difference to those pupils. I recognise that there is some progress. It is just that there is far more to do. We are very lucky to have had such a great piece of work from a neighbour. I would like to pay tribute very briefly to the Annan and Criconol ACE groups in my constituency who have made such an effort to bring it to my attention. All I would say is that, with the survey that the Government has proposed, I hope that we are all ready to read the findings of that, because I think that they will be truly shocking and disappointing, and they will demand that we redouble our efforts on a cross-party basis to make sure that we get things right for every child in Scotland. I warmly welcome the opportunity to discuss mainstreaming in education in the chamber this afternoon. It was, of course, a Labour Scottish Government that introduced the commitment to inclusive education in 2000, but that was supported across the chamber by all parties. I also make a declaration of interest, as I am proud to be the convener of the cross-party group on learning disability, which is supported by Enable Scotland. Let me start by paying tribute to Enable Scotland for its report, which is included in the main. For all the work that it does to advance the rights of people with learning disabilities. I very much welcome the consultation on guidance that was launched by the Cabinet Secretary for Education. That is, as a result of one of the recommendations arising from Enable's report, and I welcome his recognition that simply sitting in a classroom does not count as inclusion. The report, of course, is a national conversation about life at school. There is no doubt that education for young people with learning disabilities has improved immensely, but it is now 17 years since the presumption to mainstream young people with learning disabilities in education. We have seen a whole generation of young people go through every stage of education and the report, reflecting as it does on their lived experience and that of their parents, carers and teachers, is very invaluable. What stories and experiences tell us, however, and what we have heard in this chamber, is that there is much more to do, because we know that for too many young people in our country, inclusive education is still not a reality. Many are still being excluded from classrooms and from opportunities that would enrich their everyday lives. Enable Scotland's report sets out 22 steps that we can take to make inclusion in education the standard for all Scotland's young people. However, in the time available, I want to focus on just a couple of areas. First, the need for specialist staff. The research shows us that 98 per cent of teachers feel that they are not adequately prepared. That is a stunning total. 86 per cent said that there is not enough additional support for learning staff in their schools to support young people with learning disabilities. A substantial 80 per cent of education staff said that they were simply not getting it right for every child. Although I will always welcome new strategies and good intentions, we need to recognise that the guidance will struggle to make an impact if we are faced with cuts to education budgets. I have had many cases of parents and teachers complaining about the real lack of support in the classroom that has had an impact on their children. That is their lived experience. There have been cuts. The number of children with additional support needs has increased by 153 per cent since 2010. Many of those pupils are coming from a lower-income household and an area of deprivation. Since 2010, 1 in 7 ASN teaching posts have been cut. Numbers of children are increasing, but teaching posts are reducing. We know that, in the past decade, there are 4,000 fewer teachers, 1,000 fewer support staff and, critically, 500 fewer additional support needs specialists. Spending per pupil in Scotland has fallen cumulatively by over £1 billion. That is a reduction in real terms of £489 per head at primary level and £152 per head at secondary level. Let me say as gently as I can. We all want this to work, but it will not work unless there are more resources. I do not mean just generally, quite specific and targeted resources to go hand in hand with the guidance that will be good and will make a difference. The education workforce is central to that success. Enable Scotland is called for renewed investment in the role of additional support for learning teachers. That is essential. We need to ensure that that specialist resource is regularly available to all education staff. I want inclusive education embedded into every part of the curriculum, and the guidance will help that, but we must ensure that the specialist teaching resource is in place to support that, too. Having training and employment for specialist support teachers matters as well. That will benefit not only the pupils who rely on that kind of support at school but the teachers and education staff who are routinely put under pressure at work, many of them feeling stressed and anxious due to not having the right support to meet the needs of children and young people with learning disabilities. The need for additional support for learning teachers was highlighted by people in my constituency as part of Enable Scotland's national conversation. I want to draw attention to two particular responses—one from a parent in Western Barcha, the other from a teacher in Argyll and Bute. Both of them, from their different perspectives, stated that they did not believe that proper support for children and young people with learning disabilities was in place. The teacher highlighted that in Argyll and Bute all the training for additional support needs had been organised privately and that the local authority had provided no support whatsoever. That is clearly disappointing. I wholeheartedly agree with many of the points that were made by Bob Dorris. It might surprise him that I do so, but I thought that he made an excellent speech. I agree that at the end of the day we can do better. We must do better because we owe it to future generations of young people with learning disabilities. The guidance will be a good start, but we need the additional specialist staff to support its implementation. I commend all the recommendations in Enable's report to the Scottish Government, and I promise that the cross-party group on learning disability will continue to be a critical but encouraging friend on this journey towards genuine inclusion in our schools. I call George Adam to be followed by Jeremy Balfour. I am glad to be part of this debate for a number of reasons that will become relevant as I progress, but to begin with, I am pleased to hear from the Deputy First Minister that those with learning difficulties or outcomes have improved. I also agree with Iain Gray, and I am paraphrasing him here when he says that we have been in a long journey in this Parliament and it is an issue that we can always look for improvement. It was also interesting to hear from Jenny Glawruth and say that, from a professional point of view of what happens in our schools as well, because I know that it is a very emotional issue for families whose children are affected by learning difficulties and what they are going through. In my constituency, I constantly hear about families whose children have not been diagnosed or are not going through the process or are in the process and are not getting the support that they have. I hope that the guidance, and it looks like from reading it that the guidance will help with that as well. However, I am aware that the presumption for mainstreaming has been a core of the Parliament's inclusive education since 2000, and I am aware, Presiding Officer, that for a number of reasons, someone who has not just been involved with politics for a very long time, but my awareness comes from the fact that my son James went through the educational system before this Parliament was reconvened. Oliver Mundell, I can tell him that I am that old, I do remember what it was like beforehand. James struggled with primary school right from the very beginning, and it took a while for teachers and everyone else to try and find out what the issue was. He was a bright wee boy, he was talented, he asked all the questions. When he found out what why he was, that became very difficult for any other parent to get all the questions. Specifically, when he said, why are we Superman supporters? Why do we do this? Why do we do that? That was a difficult one for me to answer. No one knew what was wrong with James, and at some point some of the teachers treated him with less than professional attitude in his assessment of him. He was thought of as a child that was just never going to be able to catch on and move forward in school. By the time that he was heading to primary 3, he was diagnosed with dyspraxia, and the education authorities decided that it would be a good idea to have him in a local special school. My whole argument was then, and it is now, that I do not believe that that was the best way forward for my son in that scenario. We made that argument at the time, but we never had the processes that are available to parents here and the guidances that are available to local authorities. It was more or less a situation where James ended up. By the time that he had no confidence, he had lost faith in the educational establishment. That is why I am glad that we are in a position now where we are all standing here agreeing that we know that this is the way forward. It is just making sure that we get it right. The whole idea is that when James never scenario went to anything like a football boys club and if he asked what school he was in, there was a whole embarrassment of him going to a different school from them, and it was the special school that he went to. That caused all kinds of problems, until to this day, if he was honest, he would probably kill me if he ever sees this, and I have mentioned it. However, if he was honest with himself, that affected him till this actual time. The Scottish Government's policy is that children and young people should learn in the environment that best suits their needs. If my son had had that support, it could have made the difference, because James actually started to become his self. It was the lowest that he was steaming himself in his achievements. He could not feel as if he was doing anything that was of any value to anyone, no matter what love and affection and support his family and friends gave him. Even with all that, he still had difficulty. However, we must remain on focus what is good about the presumption of mainstreaming. I know that it is challenging, but I do not want anyone else's child to go through what my own son did. I am particularly pleased with some of the new guidance that the Scottish Government will introduce. The fact that the education authorities must identify, provide and review the additional support that their pupils need to overcome the barriers to learning. The guidance itself aims to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and day-to-day experience to ensure that local authorities have the guidance required to help in their decision making and to apply the presumption of mainstreaming. I am aware of the difficulties, but we need to ensure that young men and women get that support at the time when they actually need it. However, 95 per cent of children currently with additional support needs are educated in mainstream schools. If only they had that back in the day, I believe that all our teachers offer the kind of support that our children and young people need. They are the ones who can be that person for the young person to go to. They are the ones who offer that way forward for our young people to be ambitious in trying to achieve all that they can. However, they provide that support and should help all the children and young people to reach their full potential. One of the many things that we found during our time was that, even when James went to the special school himself, it was a fantastic school and it offered so much, but it was not right for him and it was not the right place where he should have been. I think that that is what we are looking at now. We have a system where we are trying to ensure that we get our children to the right place at the right time. Many young people went through the system that did not take into account their needs. My son James has been one. Since the Parliament came into being, the presumption of mainstreaming has been a key part of our educational policy. We must ensure that we continue to develop that policy further and, as Ian Gray said, constantly improve it and ensure that we can do better so that all our children and young people get the start that every single one of them deserves. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. You will find this hard to believe, but I started school in 1972, and yes, the years have been kind. I was very fortunate, Deputy Presiding Officer, that where we lived here in Edinburgh became the centre for many people from Scotland and the north of England who had upper and lower limb and the PMR set up a special sentence. Over the holiday period, many of us got together to get extra help that was required. Looking back, I think that I was the only child of that age that went to mainstream school. Everyone else went to a special needs school. I was very fortunate when my parents chose to mainstream me and I was fortunate to go to an independent school here in Edinburgh. However, we have to set that in that historical context, that how far we have come as civic society, as politicians and as educators. There are many lessons that we need to learn, and many of them have been highlighted by others today. However, we have come a long way, and I think that we need to be encouraged by that and say that, yes, we are on a journey, and the journey has taken us so far, and we need to go further. In the time that I have this afternoon, I would like to make two points about this. I think that the Deputy First Minister picked this up in his speech, and I was grateful that he did. When we talk about mainstreaming and education, we are not simply talking about what happens in the classroom in regard to lessons. Too often, we concentrate on whether we have the right provision when they are in English or maths or whatever. That is vitally important, and we should not play that down. However, if we see inclusion as somebody who is isolated for the rest of their school experience, we are missing more points. What happens in the playground is probably as important, if not more important, than what happens in a primary school lesson. What happens in how a child is treated in the lunchroom or dining room is as important as what happens in the classroom. How we treat children in regard to PE and other activities is really important. We have lots of teachers who are able to think outside the box when it comes to those activities. I picked up on my personal experience because I was unable to participate in football, rugby or cricket as a player. The school realised that I would be able to umpire, touch-judge and score the cricket match. To be included in a way that I was able to benefit from and build those friendships. Sometimes we need to give head teachers that room to be able to think outside what we can normally do so that a child feels always included. I fully agree with the comments that were made by Jackie Baillie and by Tara Scott in regard to the support that we need to give our teachers and support teachers around that. The final point that I would like to make is in regard to postcode lottery, or perhaps to put it another way, parent code lottery. Although we see the presumption age for mainstreaming, we also and the Scottish Government agree that for some children, their best interests will not be served in a mainstream, but we will be served in a school that meets their needs in certain different ways. What surprised me at both as a local councillor previously here in Edinburgh City Council and also in the postbag in regard to being a regional MSP is that those who want to choose for their children not to be mainstreamed but to go to a different type of school, if they shout loudest, if, let's be honest, our middle class, are far more likely to get a place in that school than others from the rest of our society. I think that there is a challenge for local authorities, for us as politicians, that we make sure that those who come from vulnerable backgrounds, whether they are economic, educational or family, have the same opportunities as those like myself who come from a privileged middle class background. I also think that we have to say and be very careful that we do treat every child as an individual. Yes, we have the presumption of mainstreaming and that I support fully and benefited from that. However, there will be times when it is not right for a child to be mainstreamed. As my colleague Lynn Smith said, we have to make sure that we protect those schools that are providing those excellent services both financially and in regard to the way that we speak about them protected in the right way. I also want to thank Neable for their report, for the work that they are doing around this area. I think that there has been a very positive debate, I think that there is agreement and I would encourage us all that we are on our journey and we are maybe halfway there and we need to keep going cross-party-wise. In March this year, I led members' business on the subject of the presumption of mainstreaming, as it was addressed in the excellent Enable Scotland report that was included in the main. It is a measure of the importance placed on the subject by members of this chamber that, by the time seven MSPs had signed my motion, every party in this Parliament had been accounted for. I therefore warmly welcome this further opportunity to debate mainstreaming and, more importantly, the release of excellence and equity for all, which for me really does move this discussion on. I am sure that Enable Scotland will be heartened to see the new guidance, acknowledging in a general sense the validity of their concerns. As the introduction to the guidance states, at present, despite the strength of the legislative and policy basis and the ambitious vision for all children and young people, more needs to be done and more can be done to get it right for every child and ensure that they are all experienced, equity and excellence. Let me, as I did in March, declare an interest. My wife is a member of a hard-pressed additional supports needs team in a secondary school. My passion for this subject and I know I am not alone among MSP colleagues in this is fired more so by experience of constituency casework. I support entirely the presumption in favour of mainstreaming, but the way in which it is being interpreted and implemented by some local authorities absolutely needs looked at. That document, the consultation and accompanying research opens the door to doing just that. Let me focus on two specific points covered in the guidance, which have one thing in common, the fact that they in some instances are currently being approached in anything but the way the guidance anticipates. Billpoint 32 addresses a situation where it may be necessary to look to alternatives to mainstream settings for a child or young person, because their behavioural issues for example are such that they would not benefit from being in that environment, and the education of other children could be impacted. In reality, I would suggest that, other than in the most extreme circumstances, pupils who are disruptive are being placed into mainstream environments, albeit perhaps catered for all the time and learning support bases, with little real regard for their impact on others. It is left to already hard-pressed staff to manage the situation as best they can. Billpoint 33 covers unreasonable public expenditure, and each local authority having to consider what a reasonable level of public expenditure is within the context of their commitments. It focuses on where the cost of adapting a school environment to support one young person is prohibitive and accepts in such a case, then perhaps alternative provision can be considered. Does that reflect how things are playing out currently, especially when an authority has few, if any, special schools at its disposal? Is it not all too often the case that, rather than source or fund a relatively expensive specialist placement, some councils will persuade parents that they can accommodate their child within supported mainstream provision and in practice very often without providing the additional resources required to meet that pupil's need and risking diminishing support for others? Excellence in equity for all and the consultation around it has the potential to challenge and change this approach where it exists. As Liz Smith indicated, this is not an easy subject to consider, certainly with complete candor. For example, medical advances made since 2000 mean that we have children with very complex needs being catered for in mainstream school settings in a way that almost certainly was not envisaged 17 years ago. With all the impact that has on resources and indeed on the support being offered to other ASN youngsters. Sitting alongside that, are the expectation levels of some parents? Unreasonable expectation in some cases when you look at this dispassionately, yet understandably so if you put yourself in their shoes and yet, whilst I have, in relation to cases that come across such situations, I have been struck far more by instances where the system, as delivered, is letting families down. So often that is happening for avoidable reasons, which have less to do with finances and more to do with the lack of service cohesion or, sadly, grasp of need. I will illustrate that later point. Let me highlight a case that I noted in the member's debate concerning my a teenage constituent with complex needs who had been unable to attend a local secondary school base for some months. I heard of an effort to try and reintegrate her. Her mum was invited to visit the newly refurbished base facilities, which she had been told would be an asset in catering for the daughter who is, among other things, autistic. However, her mum told me that the brand-new sensory rooms colour scheme was not autism friendly. It was tiny and the soundproofing was so inadequate that, sitting in it, she could hear the kids passing in the adjoining corridor. Ultimately, that case had a welcome outcome. As have others I have been involved in, but the stress for all concerned over many, many months was entirely avoidable. That is not a unique experience as the enable report laid bare. When parents and carers were asked to describe their experience of the school system, 67 per cent used the word battle, 77 per cent used the word stressful, and 44 per cent used the word alone. However, I want to finish on a couple of optimistic notes. First, as we are hearing this afternoon, the publication of excellence for all has reignited the debate around what the presumption in favour of mainstream is. That is a good thing. I hope that the measured constructive tone that is being taken here today is the shape of things to come as we move forward. Secondly, I have admittedly remixed its success, sought to engage with secondary schools in my constituency around how they intend to deploy the pupil equity fund monies coming their way. To be honest, I was a little bit worried in spending it many ASN pupils to be forgotten or their interests pushed to the bottom. What I have found has been the reverse. Those schools are working with cluster primaries in a way that, amongst other things, gives rise to hope that the needs of all youngsters will be identified early and, hopefully, met as they progress through their educational journey. That is the needs of all youngsters. PEPF has the potential to change things for the better. So, too, does that guidance and the company in research. Delivering an inclusive educational environment for all speaks directly to the kind of society that we aspire to be. As others, including Jenny Gilruth and Ian Gray, have said, for far too long, young people with additional needs have suffered exclusion from education and from society as a whole. Ensuring access to mainstream schools has been a central demand of the movement for equality for disabled people in the UK and globally for quite some time. The right to participate in mainstream education is now enshrined in article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It sets out that individuals must not be excluded from the general education system on the basis of a disability and that they must be able to access inclusive and quality education on an equal basis with others. The Standards and Scotland Schools Act 2000, which has been mentioned, sought to put that right into domestic law by introducing the presumption to mainstream. That means that the default option for all is a mainstream school, ensuring that young people with disabilities and with other additional needs have that access to mainstream education. It does not, however, mean that the education is automatically inclusive. Mainstream education is not the same as inclusive education. It is, it can be, it should be, a gateway to an inclusive education, however. However, often the reality for young people with additional needs in mainstream schools is far from inclusive. Since 2010, education spending in Scotland has dropped by about 4.3 per cent in real terms. That means that around £490 spent less per primary school pupil each year, £150 less per secondary pupil. It has led to over 500 fewer specialist additional support needs teachers and a loss of around one in 10 additional support needs support staff. That is at a time when we are identifying more additional support needs among pupils, now totaling some one in four, although, as Liz Smith notes, there are issues in the consistency of identification that we certainly need to address. I look at examples of North Lanarkshire, which was mentioned at an identification rate of around six or seven per cent, compared with West Dunbartonshire, where it is over one in three children. Demographically, very similar areas, children from very similar backgrounds, and quite a significant difference there. However, that has heaped significant additional pressures on existing teachers, leading to a decline in their working conditions. A recent report by Bathsby University that has been mentioned a number of times in this chamber in recent weeks described working conditions in Scottish schools as being extremely poor at present. Teachers have less time to spend with each pupil, and with the loss of specialist ASN teachers, the expertise necessary to help some pupils is being lost. Enable Scotland, who has quite rightly been praised by almost every speaker in the debate so far, found that the vast majority of the education workforce, teachers and support staff do not feel that teacher training and other training has adequately prepared them to teach young people or to support those young people with learning disabilities. There is a lack of support for staff to do that. That has left more than half of children and young people with a learning disability feeling that they do not get the right support in school. Pupils are attending mainstream schools, but they are excluded. Whether it is informal exclusion from class, not being able to take part in school trips, not being able to participate in sporting activities—that exclusion is real. Like others here, I spend a significant amount of my time now speaking to teachers. They are working incredibly hard under very difficult conditions to provide an inclusive learning environment, but they are being let down, as austerity takes hold in Scottish schools. The challenges here are significant. It is already difficult to provide high-quality training to new teachers undergoing their initial teacher education. One year, as is the case for most teachers, is not enough to become an expert on such a vast range of additional needs. Speaking to trainee teachers, I have heard how education on additional support needs can vary quite significantly across different university courses. Some are excellent and comprehensive, prepare them well for the classroom, others, unfortunately, fall short, and many are somewhere in the middle. A lot of training on additional support needs takes place in schools, but it is significantly dependent on being placed with a teacher who has both the relevant experience and knowledge themselves and the capacity. If a trainee teacher is placed with an existing teacher who is already overburdened, already struggling with poor working conditions or who themselves do not have the relevant experience or knowledge, then those skills are not being passed on and young people are suffering as a result. I very much welcome the Government's commitment to working with the General Teaching Council and Education Scotland on additional needs and teacher training on undertaking further research on the experiences of pupils with additional needs and on developing further resources for staff. I look forward to receiving further details on the actions that the Government intends to take in that regard. With many new teachers undergoing that one-year course, it is vitally important that further training opportunities are available. As I said, the initial teacher education can often only provide a baseline of experience on additional needs. It is through continued professional development that teachers have the opportunity to enhance their ability to support pupils. However, with such high workload pressures as a result of staff shortages, teachers often do not have the time that they need to engage in that further training, and austerity has led to the erosion quite directly of CPD budgets. Updating the guidance on the presumption of mainstreaming is a welcome step. The last guidance was issued some time ago—I think that I was still at the infant end of my primary school at the time—but the situation, as well as our understanding, has moved on considerably since then. That is a welcome and necessary step, but we cannot pretend that new guidance or even that the policy in itself is enough to create an inclusive learning environment for all pupils in Scotland. From that debate, I am reassured that we clearly on a cross-party basis do not kid ourselves in that regard. The Government is committed to the principle of inclusive education, of that I have absolutely no doubt, but it must get to grips with the issues preventing that in practice. It is not enough to provide targeted pupil equity funding, for example, though, as Graeme Dey made the point very well, it is absolutely welcome and it is making a difference. What is required is reversing the damage of the last decade, allowing councils and schools to deliver the support that young people with additional needs require. That means a fair funding package for our local councils and exploring other levers that ensure that the right priority is being given to additional support needs provision in mainstream schools. The inspection regime, for example, does not, I believe, place sufficient emphasis on assessing that. With some adjustment, that could be a powerful tool in ensuring that the correct priority is given to the inclusion agenda. If we are to really, in the words of the Scottish Government, bridge the gap between legislation, policy and the practical experience of children, young people and their families, then we really must address the funding issue with some urgency. Only then can we ensure that all young people in Scotland, whatever their needs, can reach their full potential. I call John Mason to be followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am very pleased to be able to take part in this debate this afternoon. As presumption of mainstreaming has been a topic that has come up a fair number of times, I have to say in my constituency with constituents. In particular, I would say in relation to children on the artistic spectrum. I have had quite a number of cases where the parents and the nursery school, in fact, both felt that mainstream primary 1 was not going to work for their child, but Glasgow City Council has insisted on mainstream, as I think Bob Doris was saying as well. I do think that guidance or draft guidance produced is broadly good and weighs up the different factors that have been raised with me, for example the four key features of being present, participating, achieving and supported in paragraph 4. I think that when I was younger, many young people with additional needs were hidden away in places like Lennon's Castle near Glasgow and some of the rest of us used to visit them once in a while. The fact that we now have a much more mixed cohort all present together in a mainstream school in itself is a major improvement, but sometimes we have to ask ourselves as others have mentioned this afternoon how well some of the kids are really participating. There is certainly a concern from some parents that their children are not getting the individual support that they need in the mainstream school perhaps because of lack of staff. Yet I do accept that some parents that I have met can be overly protective of their kids and the point that is made in paragraph 48 is that we need to retain high expectations for all of our children and young people. That means sometimes pushing them out of their comfort zones. The example given at that part of the guidance is Cardinal Winning secondary school, which is in my constituency, and I have to say that I think very highly of them and I think that the community does as well. However, the process of taking kids out of their comfort zone can be expensive in terms of staff time and their money. A good example of this I saw a few years ago when I visited Falkland house school in Fife, which Liz Smith has already referred to. They focus on boys with autism and one thing they did was to have a number of the youngsters apply for a real job, which was, I think, cutting grass around the school, and of course some of them did not get the job and being autistic were frankly distraught at the end of that. However, that was a learning experience for those young people so that they would be able to handle setbacks in the future. However, I just do not think that many schools could have done that as it is so resource intensive. It was apparently the case at Falkland that virtually all the boys were from families with educated and better off parents who had pushed and pushed for this provision, a point that Jeremy Balfour has made. There was only one child from Glasgow there and I do not believe that only one child from Glasgow needed that provision. That has also been the experience that I have seen with friends of mine, where parents who were more able to challenge their council have achieved better outcomes for their children. The guidance is also open about this issue, which is good. The example at paragraph 59 is New Stevenson primary, where apparently some parents feel that they had to fight to get a placement. If I have a question for the cabinet secretary this afternoon, it is the same one that Jeremy Balfour asked, is how do we ensure that youngsters whose parents are less able or frankly less combative get the most suitable provision for them? If any of that sounds a bit critical of local authorities and especially Glasgow in my case, I would also want to say how much good I have seen in the Glasgow system. One of the big advantages of having schools run by the council is that the expertise and support on specialist issues can be shared across the schools and there is a scale in Glasgow that can provide special schools and also support to mainstream schools. To change tax lightly, I would also like to mention the islands bill at this stage. That might seem a little bit off the subject or the immediate subject. However, I am a member of the RAC committee and we have been doing a fairly thorough job on this bill, having visited quite a number of islands. One of the subjects in it is the island's impact assessment, which would mean that any policy or guidance, such as this one, needs to be considered as to how it would impact on island communities. I was looking at the guidance to see if there was an island's perspective on it. I was interested in paragraph 21, which suggests that pupils might attend two separate schools. That might be fairly easy in a city, but it is certainly much more challenging on an island's situation. However, I have to say that paragraph 26 was extremely good, accepting as it does that, quote, local circumstances can be very different, unquote, and that the guidance does not over-prescribe. I think that this is the kind of flexibility that the islands are looking for, but no doubt we will hear from them if it is not. Moving on to the amendments, I was glad to see in both the Conservative and Labour amendments a recognition that there is an increasing number of children with additional support needs that it would be a challenge at any time to cope with, and especially when finances are tight. I myself am very open to some tax increases, assuming that we will actually get more money from that, and it will not just lead to widespread avoidance. However, even with increased revenue through taxation, resources will still be tight, and we will not be able to do all that we would like to do. I hope that there will be recognition across the chamber that we all need to prioritise and that no one will get all that they want. Finally, I thought that the point that was made in paragraph 29 was worth emphasising. We want our young people both to meet learning targets and to have a full experience of school life, again, Jeremy Balfour talked about that. Gone are the days when academic results are the be-all and end-all. I met University of Scotland this morning, and they made the point that employers are looking for graduates who are rounded and ready to start work, and not just those who are most academically able. For all our children, we want the best possible outcomes, and I am happy to commend those guidelines and the motion to that end. Thank you very much, Mr Mason. I call Monica Lennon to be followed by Ruth Maguire, and you have got an extra 30 seconds, 40 seconds on. Isn't that exciting? You have made my day, Presiding Officer. Like many MSPs across Parliament, I have been raising concerns with the Scottish Government about the declining numbers of additional support needs teaching posts at a time when the number of identified pupils with additional support needs has rocketed. Each time that I have raised that, the Scottish Government has provided explanations for why that has happened, including the reason that the way in which additional support needs are defined and recorded has broadened over the years. I do not dismiss that explanation behind the dramatic rise in the number of ASN pupils in our schools since 2010. I hope that we can all agree that that does not answer why one in seven ASN posts have indeed been cut from Scotland's schools since 2010. I hope that we all recognise that it is not any comfort to families who are struggling daily to access the necessary support. It has been reassuring to hear colleagues from right across the chamber to reiterate support for the presumption of mainstreaming and for inclusion in the education system. On the principles of the issue, there is no disagreement. Liz Smith, Ian Gray and Jenny Gilruth are three different teachers from three different parties, but they have all brought reality from the classroom to the chamber. From all the contributions that I think have been very thoughtful, it is clear that we all want to see a significant improvement in outcomes and less stress on the shoulders of hard-working staff. However, it is not our words that is nice, though they are, that will make the difference. It is action that is needed. Like others, I welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has today published a consultation on updated guidance for the presumption of mainstreaming. However, I remain to be convinced that the content of the updated guidance will bring about the change that we need right across Scotland—all the improvements that we want to see. For example, there does not appear to be a single extra penny identified to provide more support for our young people. Without resources to back up the sentiments, it is difficult to see how progress will begin. However, I am encouraged to see the commitment from the cabinet secretary in the publication of the consultation that we must improve the experience of inclusion for all pupils if we are to deliver on the promise of such an ambitious framework. Being present in a mainstream school should not be the primary marker of successful inclusion. I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly and believe that it strikes at the roots of the concerns of many parents and carers whose children with additional needs are in mainstream education. As has already been pointed out during the course of this debate, the Education and Skills Committee report into ASN is clear in its analysis. Again, to quote directly, the evidence points at a number of ways in which resources are not currently sufficient to support those with additional support needs in mainstream schools. The most notable factors are the reduction in the number of specialist staff in classrooms, the reduction in specialist support services and the reduction in special school places. The experts are clear that improving the experience of inclusion therefore will require a significant investment in resources alongside revision of the guidance. I have made some scribbles here, but I think that it was the ISNL secretary, Larry Flanagan, who said that cutbacks mean that some ASN teachers fear that inclusive education is being done on the cheap. Mainstreaming, as it currently stands, is failing too many of our young people. I was particularly struck by the briefings for today's debate by Inclusion and Enable Scotland, which in part shall powerfully demonstrate the reality for our ASN young people. For example, where we have deaf or disabled pupils in mainstream schools who cannot fully participate in extracurricular events such as school trips or break activities because of inadequate provision of support, we do not have adequate inclusion, but we have further segregation and isolation. On the substance of what action should be taken to improve the guidance and practice of the presumption of mainstreaming, there are two points that I want to reinforce, like others have done so, and I hope that they will be taken on board as part of the process. First, as has been highlighted to us by enable, is taking urgent action to stop the practice of exclusion. The consequence of strained budgets and classroom resources means that types of informal exclusion, particularly for children with learning difficulties whereby these young people are removed from the classroom, can be used as an inappropriate measure of resolving issues. I am sure that the cabinet secretary and the ministers will take away with them the example, the story that Jenny Gilriff shared about her pupil, Jamie. It is vital that the updated guidance will address the point of exclusion explicitly and make clear that exclusions from school that are not properly recorded and justified are unlawful, and that that practice cannot be allowed to continue. Secondly, there is the wider point that needs to be addressed around prejudice-based bullying. It is currently the case that there is no statutory duty for schools or local authorities to record incidents of bullying. Oliver Mundell made the point that disabled children are at a heightened risk of being subject to long-term bullying at school, yet we have no adequate mechanisms to identify and record as type of prejudice-based harassment. In place, I have had the chance to contribute some thoughts on this important subject today. We are all agreed that the presumption of mainstreaming must be supported, but it is time to match words with actions and to give all our additional support to these young people, the resources and the support that they need for an inclusive education. The commitment of this Parliament to delivering inclusive education is not in doubt. However, as MSPs, parents, friends and family members, we are all aware of the challenges when it comes to delivering truly inclusive education and practice. I am aware of some local concerns around things such as education Scotland guidance not making reference to additional support needs, and we are all familiar with Enable Scotland's included in the main report, as well as that of the education committee from earlier this year, both of which set out the many concerns that need to be addressed if we are to improve the experience of inclusive education for pupils, families and teachers. We have rightfully heard many of those concerns reiterated and underlined in today's debate. The Scottish Government is clearly listening and taking those seriously. I welcome the forthcoming research that is commissioned, as well as the revised guidance, which has just been published and which will now be consulted on. Together with the results of the research, the consultation responses will feed into the final revised guidance, which I trust will address a lot of the current concerns. I would like to use this opportunity to provide some of my own feedback on the revised guidance by focusing on the importance of inclusive play and nurture to the experience of children with additional needs at school. Firstly, the guidance under the heading of participating states that all children and young people will have the opportunity to participate and engage as fully as possible in all aspects of school life, including school trips and extracurricular activity. That, of course, includes a child's right to play, which is crucial to all aspects of a child's development, social, emotional, intellectual and physical. The right of a child to play is unequivocally recognised in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which of course also forms the legal basis for the provision of inclusive education in general. It is also recognised in the play strategy that was published by the Government in 2013, which affirms a commitment to enabling all children to realise their right to play. In this context, it should concern us all that nearly half of the children and young people with learning disabilities who took part in the Enable Scotland research reported that they do not get the same chances to take part in games in the playground as everyone else in their school. Similarly, a key finding of the 2015 review of inclusive play in Scotland was that disabled children faced multiple barriers to being able to play at school. In order to enable all children to fulfil their right to play and to ensure that all children are included in all aspects of school life, it is clear that the provision of inclusive play must be improved. Where there are financial pressures, the good news is that inclusive play can be provided through quite simple, low-cost and low-key measures. For example, one of the main barriers cited to inclusive play is inflexible playground rules, such as upper age limits on activities or areas that exclude children who might still benefit from activities aimed at younger children or who have friends in younger classes. Changes to rules such as those could be made sensibly and sensitively to facilitate more inclusive play. Others have reported adapting games, for example, by having basketball posts at different levels within a game, so that all children can take part and play together. Another straightforward and uncostly way to remove barriers. Another of the main issues when it comes to inclusive play is a lack of general awareness or confidence among teachers around the value of play or how to provide play opportunities. Note that the improved initial teacher training and CPD relating to children with additional needs and support needs are key recommendations of education committee reports and enable reports. I hope that education around the importance of play provision and, in particular, inclusive play can be introduced to the discussion. In particular, it is making sure that teachers are aware of the many high-quality and free resources that are there to support. For example, the play toolkit recently launched by Play Scotland, an invaluable resource that clearly delineates the 16 recognised types of play, the different benefits that they bring and how to facilitate them. Given the importance of play to all children, as well as the particular concerns that have been raised around inclusive play provision, it would be good to see some reference to play in the delivering inclusion section of the final guidance. Many in the chamber, not least of those of us who spoke in the Bernardo's nurture week debate back in February, will also be aware of the positive and tangible effects of nurture groups on attainment and inclusion. Nurture is about having spaces where we support children to develop healthy and supportive relationships and attachments, where we make them feel valued by others and confident in themselves and where we teach them how to communicate constructively and positively. That is important for all children, but particularly so for children who are more vulnerable to experiencing difficulties and exclusion. Nurture groups also offer the benefit of enabling children to remain part of their mainstream class and work at both primary and secondary level. In that, there are eminently sensible and feasible ways of tackling some of the most complex issues that children face from a very early stage and in a meaningful and sustainable manner. That appears to me to be an important role for nurture groups as we focus on closing the attainment gap and creating a more truly inclusive educational experience for all of our children. As with inclusive play, I would be pleased to see some reference to the contribution that could be made by Nurture as the final guidance is developed. I will finish by echoing the cabinet secretary's encouragement to all interested parties to contribute to the consultation so that we can continue to improve and ensure that the policy intention of mainstreaming becomes a reality for all our children and young people. Thank you very much. I call Annie Wells. We follow by Fulton MacGregor. Annie Wells is the penultimate speaker in the open debate. Ms Wells, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Deciding the best route for any child through education will always be tough. For every change in educational thought, there will always be a question mark over its impact on some children and never has it been truer than when it comes to children with additional support needs. The context of the debate is key. In the 70s and early 80s, we rightly saw changes in thought with regards to the rights of children to be educated irrespective of their level of disability. In the early 90s, with the introduction of section 15 of the Standards in Scotland Schools Act, it became an expectation that all children would attend mainstream school unless certain exceptional circumstances applied to them. I welcome the principle of mainstreaming, where appropriate and where the correct support is provided, which is why today we are supporting the Scottish Government motion. As Liz Smith pointed out, the issue is not with the legislation itself, but with how it is interpreted by local authorities and how support is provided. If legislation is intended in the best interests of the child, adhering to principles that we all agree on, that is social cohesion and integration, then how do we ensure that a well-meaning policy is executed on a case-by-case basis in which the needs of an individual child are always duly considered? As highlighted by members in the chamber today, though there are concerns on what support pupils are getting, I have dealt with cases in my own region whereby parents have read concerns about the support that their children are getting at school. In one case, a child having additional learning support hours outside of the classroom cut from around seven hours to one and a half. Charities, too, have raised their concerns, as many in the chamber have mentioned today. In last year, Enable Scotland reported that seven in 10 pupils with learning disabilities were not getting enough time or attention from teachers to meet their needs. I surveyed and found that a huge 85 per cent of young people with learning disabilities reported that they did not get the same chances to take part in games as everyone else in school. Enable also points out that those figures serve to highlight that mainstreaming does not always mean inclusion. Simply being present at school does not mean, by default, that you become a part of the spectrum of school life. That is something that we need to address. We again need to look at the context to understand why the concern is raised by charities. What support is there in the mainstream skills? How consistent is this across the 32 local authorities? Is the support at the level that it needs to be? We know that there is disparity across local authorities' definitions of additional support needs and what constitutes the presumption of mainstream. Although the 2004 act established a broad definition of additional support needs, it still falls to individual councils to define what constitutes additional support needs within those very loose boundaries, meaning that occurrences of additional support needs across local authorities can range from just 6 per cent of pupils being identified in North Lanarkshire to 35 per cent in Aberdeenshire. Since 2012, we know that the average local authority spend on additional support needs pupils has fallen by 11 per cent. Even if those decisions are to be taken at local level, we still need to take them into full consideration when discussing national legislation. The number of learning support staff in primary skills has been cut by 19 per cent over the past four years, and in secondary skills there has been a 20 per cent reduction in learning support staff. Over the same period, the number of behavioural support staff in primary skills has been cut by 58 per cent. The country's largest teaching union, the EIS, reads its concerns over cuts to special school assistance provisions, highlighting that the impact of those cuts has left the numbers of teachers available to deal with the children with learning disabilities stretched and unable to cope. They noted how not being able to meet those pupils' needs had damaged teacher morale and made them and their pupils feel undervalued and stressed. On top of that, we know that 98 per cent of the education workforce feels that teacher training does not adequately prepare them for the teaching young people who have learning disabilities, and that 70 per cent of pupils with learning disabilities do not get the time of attention from teachers to meet their needs. Pressures on teachers are rising, and what many in the chamber would like to hear today is what is being done to reassure staff in mainstream education that they will begin to feel better equipped when it comes to supporting children with special educational needs. It is correct to say that we have made significant strides in recent decades on ensuring that our children have been educated regardless of their disability, and I am pleased that the Government's motion acknowledges the need to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and the practical experience of children. Now more than ever, it is important that we continue to make positive progress on this front, which is why local authorities and organisations must be given the proper support. There is a worrying trend that can be seen in recent years to the budgets for pupils with additional support needs, and that will only help progress. We need to look at the bigger picture and work closely across all the local authorities and the chamber, no matter where we represent to ensure that pupils with additional needs continue to get the best opportunities starting out in life. I support the motion today and congratulate the Parliament and all its administrations on the presumption of mainstreaming. I believe that all children and young people are entitled to and deserve to receive adequate and ample support in order that they can reach their full potential. I also believe that that sentiment stands regardless of a child's needs or individual requirements, whether they complete their education at mainstream school or an additional support school. I think that everybody across the chamber has reflected those same sentiments. We must be mindful that children and young people with learning disabilities should not be experiencing exclusion by their peers, by their curriculum, and that they should also not be excluded from opportunities, activities and social experiences that are an integral part of school life. It is clear to see that some aspects of the delivery of inclusive education have been a challenge, but one that is well worth taking on. A child-centred approach, which includes the input of family and school staff, is absolutely vital, and we must also look at the successes of that policy. I am pleased that the achievement for pupils with additional support needs continues to rise. 63.2 per cent of 2014-15 leavers with ASN left school with one or more qualifications at SCQF level 5 or better, an increase of 13.1 per cent since 2011-12. It is also hardening that 88.6 per cent of pupils with ASN had a positive destination and an increase of 6.3 per cent since 2011-12. I want to take my time to use some examples from my constituency. I used an example of mainstreaming in action. A young person from my constituency came to my attention recently. He is looked after by the local authority and foster care, and he is doing really well despite an extremely difficult early life. Despite many discussions about whether he would be able to manage in mainstream school or not, the young man has been placed in the local primary, where he is thriving, integrated in the community with his peers and friends, and the various things that go on in the community. He does not have to travel for miles or get transport, and he is not stigmatised by the community. Because of Farnanimity, I do not know how many foster kids are at that particular school. It is a shame that I will not be able to mention the school in question and give them the praise, but it is needless to say that the school in question has worked extremely hard to make that happen. It just shows what can happen when decisions are made locally by teachers, primarily head teachers, who know the school community's best in the networks around it in order to support their young people. I would also like to talk about an additional needs school in my constituency, Drun Park, a fantastic school that, as it says in its own statement, to put the care and welfare of each individual at the heart of a unique learning experience. This morning, children from Drun Park were at the Shannari launch in North Lanarkshire Council, and they were singing at that launch. I hope that minister, Mark McDonald, enjoyed their performance. In November 2015, the school that is on the joint campus, Green Hill, was doing a children's march in Cope Bridge to raise awareness of children's rights in the community and bringing together all partnership agencies in order to do that, and I am hoping to be able to attend that myself. That is an example of Drun Park in Green Hill, which is a campus that is working together with an additional support school, and there is a lot of overlap work, and it is absolutely fantastic to see. I must highlight that the success of mainstreaming is entirely dependent on how it is implemented. I, like probably every other MSP in here, receive a volume of referrals relating to pupils with additional support needs in the different types of referrals. Some parents might think that their child should be educated elsewhere, but other parents are looking for more support in the mainstream environment. Unfortunately, I have experienced a sharp rise in that following my own council, North Lanarkshire Council's decision to cut ASN support in terms of hours and further more cuts to classroom assistance, which were all implemented recently and widely publicised. A low-classroom assistance is perhaps not traditionally in place to assist children with additional support needs. We know that they have an overall effect in the class. I have heard countless reports of children who have experienced flourishing in mainstream previously and are now struggling, and many teaching staff do not have the time to dedicate to children. I am referring to local authority areas. We need to look at the wider picture and the different decision makers of the Government here and at local authority level. We have talked about that in many education debates before and how that has joined up. I want to touch briefly on the issue of bullying. Oliver Mundell talked about it, and I think that we must continue to support schools across the country. Bullying is a massive issue, and it can be for children who have additional support needs as well. I do not think that the responsibility can fall onto one head teacher or one key teacher. There has got to be a culture that emphasises that bullying will not be tolerated and that every man should be respected, and we need to get that message out to young people as early in age as possible. Just last week, I was talking to the senior pupils at St Andrews High School in Coatbridge, and that was one of the issues that they raised. We talked about that in relation to young people's mental health. I was really encouraging that young people were wanting to talk about that openly in such a forum. I was very, very encouraged, and I think that we all agreed during that discussion that a nurturing environment is very important. I have to say that all the schools across my constituency have worked on, and I believe that they are working towards a good, nurtured environment in their schools, but of course there is always more that we can do in that at every level. I finish by saying that I welcome the new guidance and support that aims to bridge the gap between legislation, policy and day-to-day experience. We must ensure that local authorities have the guidance that is required to help the decision-making and applying the presumption of mainstreaming and that they implement that policy in an efficient and effective manner. Thank you very much. I close in speeches at Colin Daniel-Johnston's close for Labour, please. I would like to begin by saying that there was much in the cabinet secretary's opening remarks that we can all agree on and that I certainly do. He was absolutely right to emphasise the continuity and approach and ethos that we have had since this Parliament came into being, since the Labour and Liberal Democrats Administration brought into effect the principle of mainstreaming. I think that underpins and I think that evidence is an educational approach that is really important. One that views education as being about inclusion and fulfilment of potential and I think that the cabinet secretary made those points very well. Indeed, I think that he was also right to point to the fact that this is a rights-based approach, because the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is very clear, article 24, in terms of disability and the right that children with disabilities have to a decent life and dignity, article 28, the right to education and article 10 tonight, that education is about personality, talents and abilities. Beyond mainstreaming, if you look at GARFAQ curriculum for excellence and the overall child-centred approach to learning, we see that approach. However, there are two overarching and important ideas. The only thing that should limit education is ability, talent and the ambition of a child. Importantly, in order to achieve that, you need to support it. I think that mainstreaming brings that into sharp focus, because it is in mainstreaming of children and additional support needs that these things become most challenging. In order to do that, when you do understanding, when you support an intervention and we need resource to deliver that intervention. I welcome the revised guidance. Indeed, at its heart is that continued ethos that she should welcome. I think that it also, as many members have said, provides clarification on the application of both policy and legislation. I admit that, for once, I am pleased by some of the diagrams that the documentation provides. I think that the diagrams provide some clarity on how legislation maps on to practice, so can I welcome that? I thought that the cabinet secretary would think so. Labour agrees and supports much of what we have in front of us today, and we will be voting accordingly. We must move beyond simply intent. We must move beyond simply understanding and terminology. As Monica Lennon put it, we must also have action. We need to look at what is happening now and measure what we seek to do through policy against those circumstances, and we must seek to challenge and prove it. As in that context, seeking to improve what we make is a case today. Many speakers today have referred to including it in the main, and I think that it is excellent work. I could repeat many of the statistics that were set out, but Oliver Mundell put it very well. It is sad to see those numbers laid so bare. It is sad when you think about the reality that lies behind it. I would repeat one statistic from it. 49 per cent of children with learning disabilities feel that they are not achieving what they might. That is the bar that we must measure ourselves against. We must look at the 22 recommendations and see what we can do to implement them. Likewise, I think that the education committee's work has been referred to by many. It was useful work that we did. I would like to highlight one quote that additional support needs for a large number of children are not being fully met, and that impacts on their education. Between the reports, there are three key things that they identify, which have been identified to you. One is about the consistency and quality of practice. Secondly, it is around the training of individuals and practitioners. Third, it is the resource that needs to deliver it. On the point of practice, just for clarity, I think that the way that I would explain it is through a personal example. I was very lucky to be asked along to sit in on a planning meeting for a child that was going into one of my local secondary schools. I obviously cannot go into any great detail, but the thing that struck me was that the teachers were moving heaven and earth to deliver the support that that child required. However, what was being talked about in terms of the resource being made available from the local authority was in terms of the criteria that, because the child did not meet the criteria, it could not deliver the support. To my mind, that is entirely the wrong way around. What should be asked is what does this child need in order to survive and how can the local authority best deliver that? Putting criteria in front of that delivery cannot be right. I think that Bob Doris put those points also around practice extremely well. I thought that his shopping list, he snuck in at the end of his speech, was excellent. The points around the transition from early years into primary school and primary school to secondary school, stand-alone units, estate referrals and, again, I think that Jenny Graham Day made similar points. I thought that Jenny Gull-Ruth's point, saying that the policy cannot be just something that a head teacher prints off and he or she looks alone. However, can I also point to the fact that the co-ordinated support plans are only in place for 1.4 per cent of children with additional support needs? When we look at the drop of the number of children attending specialist schools, there is clearly a gap. The number of children attending specialist schools has dropped by almost 20 per cent. For so few additional support needs children to have co-ordinated support plans, which are meant to bring the resources to bear to support them in their learning, that simply cannot be right. I think that those conclusions are supported by including the main in their conclusions and certainly supported by the education committee and its recommendation to have full quality insurance of the implementation of those policies. I would ask the cabinet secretary when he is listening to the consultation and looking ahead to improve to look at the measures for quality insurance and implementation. Ross Greer made very good points around training. Again, the education committee heard from a number of teachers and practitioners that too much training is ad hoc—a train the trainer—one person might receive training and they will pass it on. We have seen a reduction postgraduate training for additional support needs and many additional support needs posts do not require an additional support needs qualification. That cannot be right. We need to put that. We need to make sure that there are qualified people with training so that the support can be delivered. Again, the key points from including the main are around initial teacher education, continuous professional development and inclusion of those issues in the curriculum. Finally, I would just like to mention a resource. Ian Gray put it very well. His experience of the classroom of what resource means and what that means that you can deliver in terms of additional support needs were very clear. The reality is that the number of additional support needs trained teachers is down by 26 per cent. We have seen a reduction of educational psychologists. That results in the situation in which many children who are apparently mainstreamed are only received their mainstream education in a limited way. Examples such as one hour of provision per day and substandard provision in the classroom. I note that my time is now to an end. However, if we are to honour the right set out at the beginning of my speech, the right set out in the union convention of the right to the child, we must back up understanding with that practice, with the training and with the resource, because otherwise we are simply not honouring the ambition set out in those rights. Thank you. Mr Johnson, I call Michelle Ballantyne close for Conservatives a generous nine minutes. That means a wee bit more. May I first refer members to my register of interests as I am the former head of service of stable life, a charity working with children and young people with additional support needs? I have listened really closely to the contributions this afternoon. They have been very thoughtful, informed and most pleasingly have shown cross-party commitment to recognise and address the challenges that mainstreaming can bring. This is with doubt a complex and multifaceted debate, but it is a debate that we must have, and we must be willing to listen and address uncomfortable and difficult evidence because it is a question that we must get right. We owe that to our children and young people, to their parents and to all the teachers and support staff and indeed the partner organisations who strive day after day to deliver inclusive and supportive education for every child. I would say that I really welcome the cabinet secretary's announcement today, particularly around the independent research into the experiences of teachers, pupils and parents. Liz Smith and Ian Gray, both former teachers themselves, captured the plurality of issues and implications arising from the presumption of mainstreaming today. Ian Gray particularly reminded us that young people with additional needs are not asking for something special, they are merely asking for the same opportunities that every other child has. It is this that we need to bear in mind as we go through the challenges that we are going to face. Liz Smith drew our attention to the evidence of trainee teachers to the Education and Skills Committee in May of this year. This evidence painted an alarming picture, Presiding Officer, of inadequate provision at teacher training level and of feeling isolated and overwhelmed in the classroom. One young probationary teacher said, we had all these wonderful theories thrown at us, but there was no contextualisation, no specific training on autism, dyslexia or dysraxia, there was absolutely nothing. One fully qualified teacher went further, saying, we are seeing newly qualified teachers coming out who are really quite frightened by some of the behaviours in classrooms and are very unclear about how to begin approaching that, never mind planning a personal learning programme. This is an experienced teacher crying out for help from the Scottish Government. I hope that such pleas won't fall upon deaf ears. We have heard many, many of our colleagues today, Ian Gray, Jenny Galbraith, Bob Dorris, Tavish Scott, Ross Greer, Graham Day and many others, who have all recognised this issue in their speeches. As many teachers feel cast adrift, as they endeavour to deliver a bespoke education to every child, enable tellers that 98 per cent of the education workforce of aid felt that teacher training does not adequately prepare them for teaching young people who have additional support needs. We have heard a lot of praise today for enable's work and I want to add my voice to that because they captured very well some of the challenges that we face. This, Presiding Officer, is the reality on the ground and without appropriate training and adequate resources, teachers cannot meet the specific needs of ASN children and their education will suffer as a result. I recognise the words of the Cabinet Secretary and the Minister when they talked about the increase in good results from ASN children, but I would also say that the numbers have increased and some of the partners that work with them are often involved in delivering some of those good results. It does take a lot of people to get ASN children well supported and to get good results for them. As Bob Dorris has identified in his excellent speech, the right support at the outset could retain children in mainstream education. It is imperative that we do not put the criteria up as a barrier to addressing children's needs. That is perhaps sometimes the paradox that we face at the heart of the Government's support for mainstreaming. They talk in the guidance about the importance of capacity building in mainstreaming and offer warm words on employing specialist support staff and on a focus on the individual needs of the child. However, those words sometimes do seem hollow in the context of the recent cuts. As my colleague Annie Wells pointed out, the number of learning support staff in primary schools has been cut by 19 per cent over the past four years and by 20 per cent in secondary schools over the same period. The number of behavioural support staff in primary schools has been cut by 58 per cent. Bob Dorris and Oliver Mundell both powerfully invoked examples of informal exclusion and the troubling effect that this can have on isolating ASN children in substance, if not in name. We need a good support staff in order to prevent that. A presumption of mainstreaming should not be a device to cut off access to a range of opportunities, including that of special schools. A presumption for mainstreaming should not be a presumption against special provision. There is a danger that in their enthusiasm sometimes to create equity, the Government can actually give rise to an inequitable system that removes the rights of individual choice. There should be a choice and that choice must always be underpinned by the best interests of the child and of their development. That point was amplified by the comments of Jeremy Balfour, who quite rightly reinforces the fundamental need to ensure the importance of remembering that inclusion is not just about what happens in the classroom and that we must keep the individual child at the centre of decision making. Jeremy also captured the very real issue that the background of the child should not dictate their educational experiences and opportunities—a point that was strongly reinforced by John Mason's contribution. I am going to be way too quick because the Presiding Officer gave me lots of extra time. Never too quick. Let Mr Doris. You have complimented him and he is desperate to— Oh, sorry, I didn't hear you. It's a matter for you. You have to shout louder. I am sure that your language is very carefully, Presiding Officer. Thank you for being complimentary in relation to my speech. I was supportively critical of Glasgow City Council, but I also have some wonderful specialist units in my constituency. What I didn't do was pray some wonderful practice, so let me talk about the hearing unit in St Rocks in Royston, and let me talk about— It's an intervention, Mr Doris. It's not a second speech. To the chair, Mr Balfour, we're falling apart now. A question, please, Mr Balfour, something like that would be handy. Thank you, Presiding Officer. You're so supportive. Can I ask you whether you agree with me that— Oh, no, no, no. There are excellent examples of support and special needs education, including in my constituency, at the hearing and visual unit in St Rocks primary, and at the autism unit in Hyde Park, in Ruck Hill, in my constituency. That's fine, and that's enough, Mr Doris. Thank you, Ms Ballantyne. My apologies, Mr Doris. There are many, many examples of very good support in specialist units and in mainstream support, and that is down to some very dedicated staff. I want to pick up on one bit of conversation that took place during this debate, around the need for partnership working and the recognition that it takes a family to raise a child—a comment that you'll often hear in social work circles and in additional needs support, particularly around children who are looked after and accommodated. Often, many of the additional needs children are looked after and accommodated as well. We must recognise that, while mainstreaming a young person, many of those young people also spend time with partner organisations, many from the voluntary sector. In order to ensure that the children can get the best development and the best results, that engagement with organisations for a period a day, or for a day a week, or even in some cases two or three days a week, can make the difference as to whether they survive in mainstream school or don't survive in mainstream school. That partnership working between teachers and specialists outwith mainstream education can be really beneficial to young people. I hope that the Government, when it is doing its work around this, and when we are bringing it forward in terms of guidance, that will be recognised, because teachers cannot do this job alone. It is part of the reason that many teachers feel extremely stressed, because so many things are being pushed back on to teachers. For my own part, I used to head up the drug and alcohol service. Much of that work has now been pushed to teachers who are now expected to become experts in the field. I will turn to my closing remarks now. We on the Scottish Conservative benches welcome this afternoon's debate, and we welcome the direction of travel that the Government is taking. The Scottish Government's ambition to place the presumption of mainstreaming as a cornerstone of an inclusive approach to education is understandable. However, as the evidence from today's debate highlights, the presumption can also have manifest and detrimental effects on a child's education if we don't get the delivery right. Indeed, the Scottish Government's own guidance says, and I quote, that more needs to be done, more can be done to get it right for every child. I fully support GoFec, and if we are serious about getting it right for every child, then they must first commit to getting it right for every teacher. There we must conclude. Your time has been used up magnificently. No, no, you must conclude. In good conscience, I please ask you to support our amendment and support our teachers. Well, there you are. I now call Mark McDonald to close for the Government minister until five o'clock, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. At the point at which Michelle Ballantyne had run out of things to say, I was kind of grateful, because I've got a lot to get through. Alas. It's okay. We'll just crack on anyway. I want to pick up on a point that Michelle Ballantyne raised, where she spoke about the point at which the cabinet secretary had raised and which I had reiterated in an intervention to Mr Gray about the increase in terms of positive outcomes. She said that that can be explained by the fact that the number of children with additional support needs has increased. The point is that what we're talking about here are the percentages. So, yes, the global sum will have increased, but so to have the percentage of children within that total who are achieving positive outcomes. Therefore, whether one looks at it in terms of a global sum or in terms of a percentage, the trajectory is positive in relation to that. The approach that the Government takes in relation to children and young people generally is underpinned by our commitment to the principles of GIRFET, getting it right for every child. I've said at many an event that, for me, the key word in that is every, and that the approach that we should take is to view every child in Scotland as a unique individual capable of achieving his or her full potential, whatever that may be. That is no more different in relation to children with additional support needs and disabilities than it is for any other child. I'll come back to that as we go through the discussion that has taken place in the debate. As members have rightly highlighted, there is still a journey that we need to travel in relation to that on this agenda. Liz Smith raised a question regarding what was underpinning decisions in relation to mainstreaming and what were the factors that were motivating some of those decisions. We have reiterated in the guidance that there are three very clear exemptions in relation to mainstream education. That is where it would not be suited to the ability or aptitude of the child where it would be incompatible with the provision of efficient education for the children with whom the child would be educated or would result in unreasonable public expenditure being incurred which would not ordinarily be incurred. The interesting thing about that is that the resource question is not being framed in that respect in the way in which members have suggested. A number of members have suggested that mainstreaming is being done as a means by which to save money. In actual fact, what we are looking at here is that, often in the situations that members describe, that is not the actual outcome and is actually something that should not be used as a motivation, because often it is the flip that is true in relation to the support that is required for those pupils. Bob Ian Gray stated that the positive outcomes that were highlighted to him were a testament to the hard work of teachers and support staff. Yes, that absolutely is the case and the Government recognises the hard work and dedication of those staff members. I hope that today one of the messages that comes from the chamber loud and clear and certainly seems to have come loud and clear from the chamber is how much we value the work that those staff are doing in our schools. I will give way briefly to Mr Gray. The minister makes an entirely fair point, but he has to also accept that those teachers need more support from us than simply warm words. They need the resources to do the job that they are doing so well. Let me turn to the question of resource, which I was going to come to a little bit later. If we look at the local government financial statistics for 2015-16, the spend on education was £4.9 billion across Scotland. That is a 2.7 per cent increase on 2014-15, a 1.9 per cent real-terms increase. Of that, the £584 million was spent on additional support for learning. That is an increase of £5 million on the previous year's figure, so we see increases in expenditure. I will come back to the point about resources a little bit later on in relation to the wider debate that we have had today. I thought that Jenny Gilruth very importantly highlighted some of the questions that we need to face in relation to the story of Jamie. It was brought up by a number of members across the chamber the question around how exclusion works in relation to children. We are very clear that exclusion must be viewed as a last resort. In terms of the point that was made by some members about how we categorise and gather data in relation to informal exclusion within the school building, there are some questions about how easy it would be to capture that data without potentially creating additional burden, but we will give consideration to that. Bob Doris asked about guidance in relation to transitions. The guidance is included in the code of practice for ASL, and there are duties on education authorities on planning for transitions. I am also working to develop a framework for supporting children and young people affected by disability and their families. Part of that work will be around looking at how we ensure that transitions are managed effectively and appropriately. Jackie Baillie highlighted the work of Enable Scotland, as did a number of other members. We are very pleased that we were able to work with Enable Scotland in the development of the guidance, and they have been positive in relation to the work that has been done and the guidance itself. As members have highlighted, it was brought up across the chamber by a number of members. Jeremy Walfour in particular mentioned that about the need for this to be about more than just a presence in the classroom. Indeed, if we look at page 6 of the guidance under participating, the key expectations include that all children and young people will have the opportunity to participate and engage as fully as possible in all aspects of school life, including school trips and extracurricular activity. We recognise that that is about ensuring that the entire experience is inclusive for those children, not simply the fact that they can gain access to the classroom and the educational opportunities contained within. I thought that, again, Graeme Dey highlighted a very balanced contribution, as many contributions were, highlighting some of the concerns at a local level. Concerns that members across the chamber will recognise from their post bags, where things are not necessarily working in the best interests of children and families, but also highlighting that, at the same time, there are positive examples out there of where the work is being done to provide those positive outcomes for children and young people. He highlighted in particular positive use of pupil equity funding, an example from his constituency, but one that I am sure we could all echo from our own communities and our own schools. Monica Lennon highlighted the issues around, for example, deaf pupils and, obviously, the Government recently launched the BSL national plan. Part of that will be to drive some of the inclusion around BSL users and deaf pupils, so we will hope to see improvement on the back of the targets that have been set in relation to the BSL plan. She also mentioned exclusion, and, as I have said, that must always be a last resort. She also mentioned bullying, and that was brought up again by a number of other members across the chamber. The Government has given very clear commitments in relation to prejudice-based bullying in terms of our evidence to the relevant committees on that, and I am aware that committees are seeking opportunities to bring a debate to the chamber where the chamber will have its opportunities to have its say in relation to prejudice-based bullying. I look forward to those discussions and debates that are continuing. Fulton MacGregor cited a number of positive outcomes, and he mentioned Drum Park Primary, who had the great pleasure to meet today at the launch of the GERFEC toolkit in Udingston, where they put on a fantastic performance. He also highlighted the important work that is being done in relation to Greenhill and Drum Park, being a positive example of mainstream at the ASN co-location and co-working. The impact that that is having for the pupils from Drum Park and for the pupils from Greenhill. I should declare my interests as a parent of a child with additional support needs. I have seen in the school that my son attends, which is co-located mainstream and additional support needs, fantastic examples of the benefits that are not just delivered to the pupils with additional support needs, but also to the mainstream pupils who have the opportunity for interaction with those pupils and learn a great deal in terms of the citizenship elements of the curriculum for excellence. A number of points have been made in this debate about resources. John Mason highlighted very importantly that what we have to have is a debate about not just resources but also prioritisation. There is a debate to be had about the priorities that we attach to resources. The Government is in a position where we are willing to listen to that debate and listen to what members ask in relation to that. I would just say gently to the Conservative benches, because a number of speakers on the Conservative benches focused on the issues around budgets and the issue around wanting to see more spend. They cannot come to this chamber and continually ask for additional spend across a range of areas, including in terms of education, when, at the same time, they are a part of a party who, at a UK Government level, are driving forward austerity, which is impacting on the budget of this Parliament, but beyond that, where they as a party in this chamber are proposing a taxation policy that would see £140 million reduction in public spending. I am willing to have a debate with members across the chamber about resources and prioritisation, but I say to the Conservatives that they must come at this from a position of at least some self-awareness when it comes to talking about the allocation of public resources. Thank you. That concludes our debate on the presumption of mainstreaming. We come to decision time. The first question is that amendment 858.1 in the name of Liz Smith, which seeks to amend motion 858 in the name of John Swinney on the presumption of mainstreaming be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. We will move to our vote and members may cast those votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 858.1 in the name of Liz Smith is yes, 59, no 55, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore agreed. The next question is that amendment 858.3 in the name of Ian Gray, who seeks to amend the motion in the name of John Swinney be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. We will move to our vote and members may cast those votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 858, 858.3 in the name of Ian Gray is yes, 59, no 53, there was one abstention, the amendment is therefore agreed. The final question is that motion 858 in the name of John Swinney, as amended, on the presumption of mainstreaming be agreed. Are we agreed? We are not agreed. We will move to our vote and members may cast the votes now. The result of the vote on motion 858 in the name of John Swinney, as amended, is yes, 59, there were no zero votes and there were 55 abstentions. The motion, as amended, is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time. I now close this meeting.