 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the eighth meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2019. I remind everyone present to please turn mobile phones to silent so that they don't disrupt the meeting. Apologies have been received this morning from my colleague Gordon MacDonald, MSP. Our first agenda item is a decision on whether to take agenda item 3 in private and we also need to decide whether to take consideration of a draft report on Scottish national standardised assessments and the committee's consideration of the approach to subject choices inquiry in the next meeting in private. Are members content to take agenda item 3 in private and to take the future consideration of the draft report in private? Thank you. At agenda item 2, we are continuing our evidence session on additional support needs and following from our 2017 report on additional support needs, on the panel of witnesses from organisations and practitioners representatives who work directly with children and young people with additional support needs. I have joined us today. I welcome Kayleigh Thorpe, head of campaigns and policy and activism at Naible. Nick Ward, the director of National Autistic Society Scotland. Sheamus Searson, general secretary of Scottish secondary teachers association, which I think will say SSTA for the duration of the committee this morning. If the panel would like to respond to a question, please indicate to myself with a clerks and we'll try and ensure that you get an opportunity to respond. I begin by inviting a brief outline of their work and their organisation's experience in the area, including any work that's been done since our report in 2017. Can I invite Kayleigh Thorpe to begin with that? Thank you. It's great to be here today. I've spoken at the committee before on this subject, so I'm delighted to be back. Just over two years ago, in December 2016, Enable Scotland published, Included in the Main. Included in the Main was really about recognising that Scottish education has come a long way, and 16 years ago at that time, we took a very progressive step towards the entrainment of the UNCRPD article 24. The presumption to mainstream has achieved the majority of young people being educated alongside their peers in a mainstream setting, but included in the Main set out to listen to that generation and learn from their experiences and inform what should be the next steps on the journey to inclusion, because that's what we should be striving for. Inclusion beyond mainstreaming, beyond the right to be present, is the right to be included, and that's what I'd like to speak to the panel about today. I really welcome the committee's on-going interest in this subject. Thank you very much, Mr Ward. Thank you. I represent both the National Autistic Society but also our partner Scottish Autism and Children in Scotland. Since the publication of this committee's report, we have published our own report called Not Included, Not Engaged, Not Involved. To give you a bit of context of that, we wanted to provide, to get a deeper understanding of families with autistic children where those children were missing school and what that experience looked like. We surveyed 1,400 parents and carers of autistic children who'd been out of school in the last two years. What we discovered is what you'd expect, that autistic families are facing incredible barriers to accessing support and accessing education, which they're entitled to, but it also included a number of key findings that did shock us, particularly that more than a third said that their child had been unlawfully excluded, so that was the idea that the correct processes were not followed when their child was sent home, often as their child was sent home against the will of the parents, and as such that child didn't get the proper support when reintegrating back into school. We also discovered that a quarter of those people were saying that this was happening more than once a week, so they were regularly getting phone calls demanding that they turn up to their school and take their child home. The key part of that was also that 200 of those parents said that they'd had to either give up or seriously reduce their working hours in order to cope and deal with the situation that their school couldn't cope to support their children, which was really significant. We published a report and we've had significant engagement from the Scottish Government on it, which we're very grateful for. I'm happy to answer any questions on the report during this, and to talk a little bit about the experience of autistic children and their families within the school system. Good morning. The Scottish Secondary Teachers Association represents just under 7,000 teachers in secondary schools, and we submitted a report back in 2017, which you've already seen. If anything, the situation has got worse in terms of the number of pupils that have identified as ASN has increased and the number of staff in teachers and support staff has been reducing. Unfortunately, the consequence of that is that most children's needs are not being met. There's a greater disruption in classes, which obviously blends into other issues as well, and a greater burden on the classroom teacher. As a teachers association, that's one of the things that we're very concerned about. As you probably appreciate, there is a major campaign on teachers pay going on at the moment, but following shortly behind that is obviously workload, which is obviously escalated as a consequence of this. The shortage of resources in ASN across schools in Scotland is inconsistent, but, equally, people seem to think that there is a lack of understanding of what ASN actually is, and that's one of the things that I'd like to get across during today's meeting. Thank you very much. I'm going to move to questions from the committee and move to Mr Gray. Thanks, convener. Last week, in the discussion that we had with the panel, we spent some time on the decline in the use of co-ordinated support plans. There was some concern expressed by the panel last week because the CSP is the plan that has a statutory basis, and it's the gateway to access to the tribunal service. I really just wanted to ask the panel for their views on the very low level of application of the CSP process. I don't have any data on it, but what I do know is that we had our cross-party group on autism two weeks ago, and it was one of the issues that was brought up by the audience there or something that people were struggling with with the level of inconsistency that they were experiencing from different local authorities. The room seemed to indicate that they felt that there should be greater and stronger guidance on the application of CSPs and on people understanding their right to have one and to ask for one, and that that information wasn't always clear to families who were often struggling with lots of different things at once. The main thing that stood out there was the lack of consistency in approaches from different places. I would agree and I would echo some of the evidence that you probably heard last week as well. There is a decline, and you have the detail on that. I think that what we see in terms of parents and families is what you heard about last week, the fight and the struggle for what their support needs for their child, and a CSP is seen as a mechanism for addressing that. A lot of families would like to have one, but there are a lot of families that don't know that they exist. I would agree that a lot of the work could be done to raise awareness of the right to access the CSP and that understanding across the whole education system from parents, families, teachers and local authorities. We know that the child's plan is also something that is seen as another mechanism for planning, but what I would say is that it doesn't have the statutory enforcement that comes with a CSP, which is what you will have heard from previous witnesses and again provides that gateway to the tribunal. More awareness and understanding of rights is crucial for supporting families and supporting young people. If you think that there is a lack of understanding or awareness among families that they have a statutory right to a CSP, who's fault do you think that is? You're both Nick and Kelly, you're both work for organisations who are advocates for those families. Is it your failure to let them know that they have the statutory rights or is it, I don't know, the councils? Whose failure is it then? I would hold our hand up and say that we do have a responsibility as an organisation that advocates for people and that maybe we need to go and think for ourselves a little bit about how we can make that information clearer on our resources, but ultimately the failure for that has to rest with the Scottish Government and I would say it has to rest with the idea that if you are someone who is either disabled or disabled person in your family, there are lots of examples of different bits of information that you struggle to get into put together and that doesn't just happen with just one area that happens across the board. I think that it's something that, again, I would say both national government and local authorities both have a responsibility too. I don't know whose fault it is but I think we all have a bit of responsibility and we all need to sort of step up to that a bit. I was just going to say before that it's just to give a flavour of how big this thing has changed. The number of children with ASN has increased nearly doubled since 2011, nearly 200,000 youngsters, yet the number of CSPs has dropped by nearly half. Those children haven't disappeared. One of the major failings in the system is that we shouldn't be expecting parents to know what their rights are. The system should be delivering what's best for those youngsters in our schools. I think that it's a failure of the system, not going to say the government, the local authorities and the schools themselves. The lack of knowledge, lack of understanding, because all teachers want to do the best for their youngsters, but they haven't got the tools to do so. I feel that we need to be looking at a slightly different way. Those parents that are able to access and understand the rights is one group, but there's a vast number that don't. I think that there's a failing there. If we really are serious about inclusion in schools and doing the best for all our children, then we need to change the whole approach. That's not an easy give, but I do understand that. When you ask the question of where we need to do, we need to be focusing on that it should be the authorities, the systems right to make sure that those children meet the needs, because at the moment they have been failed. I would say that more than at the time, because that's the message that I'm getting from our teachers in schools who cannot cope at the moment. Most of it is that they don't understand the system. Every authority has got a different system, a different interpretation, and what's expected of teachers is different. I think that we've got a whole major education process to undertake to try and get this thing to actually do what we want to do. Teachers are part of that system, Mr Sears. Do you think that they are aware that those children have a statutory right to CSP? Are they saying to their school why does this pupil in my class not have a CSP? The teachers themselves don't understand. I'll give a go for safaras. Teachers can very easily identify that there's a youngster that has got some extra needs, but they're not experts and know how to do that. I feel that we've got to be able to change that environment. You hear often talked about we need to do more in initial teacher education to make people aware of all these different things. It's impossible to deliver all of that in the initial teacher education. I think that we've got to expect that there needs to be experts working in our schools who can identify those youngsters and help the teachers to deliver what they need to do. Teachers aren't experts in all these fields and we've got to accept that. In your submission, the child plans were introduced around 2011 and they will eventually replace individualised education programmes and co-ordinated support plans. That jumped out to me because the evidence that we heard from the Ombusman last week was that only the CSP has a statutory right associated with it. Is the practice that you're experiencing that your members are being phased out by practice? In many cases, the teachers don't understand that they're there. What they are often given is a different label on a process that is internal. Just think some examples. A wellbeing assessment plan, a co-ordinated service plan, get it right for me plan. Those are just some examples of what's going around the authorities. When the youngsters move authorities or teachers move authorities, it's a different process. They're all very bureaucratic and I would argue that the reason they're bureaucratic is to try and push the numbers back to reduce them. Teachers get frustrated because they say that there's a need for a youngster and by the time they've completed one set of forms, they find that there's another set of forms and then they have to do another update. The system is bogged down with bureaucracy and not in the interests of the young people. Thank you. Ms Thorpe, did you want to come back in? It was really to restate some of the points that were made but we do need a proactive system for families and for young people and I think that's to Shea Mrs's point. Most common phrases that we hear from families are lack of information, battle, stressful, alone, so we need a proactive system that is telling them about what support is available to them and to their young person. Thank you. Mr Gray, you contain. Can I move to Ms Smith? Obviously, the Parliament debated the issue of mainstreaming a month ago and unanimously we agreed that mainstreaming in principle is a good thing and I don't think anybody wants to remove that. Nonetheless, the Parliament also agrees that there are concerns about the increasing number, just as Mr Searson has been spelling out, the increasing number and being reported by teachers who are not coping particularly well in mainstream education. Whether you feel that the guidance that is given to local authorities is adequate, whether it needs to be extended or reformed, because the cabinet secretary has helped to give a commitment that he will look at these again, could you give us your views on that? The guidance on the presumption to mainstream was the primary call from Inebol Scotland, including the main campaign in 2016. We believed that schools and local authorities did need more guidance, because that was guidance written in 2000. We have come a long way since then, we have got the GERFEC, we have a huge number of developments since then, including the additional support for learning act. We believe that it needs to be reformed and that schools and local authorities need more guidance on going beyond the right to be present, which is what is delivered at the moment, to the right to be included in what that looks and feels like. We have been part of contributing our thoughts and views to a review of guidance, so we look forward to that being published. Can I just press you a little bit on that issue? I mean, do you feel that there are three conditions, obviously, which, if they are met, allows a child to go into a special school situation? Do you feel that those three conditions need to be expanded or changed? Is there something specific that you are looking for in better guidance? I believe that it would need to be changed in the law in terms of those three specific conditions. I do not think that we need to go beyond those conditions. I think that what we need to encourage is the thinking that goes into the application of those exceptions. I believe that the guidance seeks to address some of the probing questions that need to be considered in the application of each of those conditions. Just to be clear, it is about the interpretation of those conditions. You do not want the actual conditions to change. The interpretation and then beyond that, the implementation. What does it look and feel like when you are in a mainstream setting? I think that that is the biggest condition for me. Mr Searson, can I just ask about what feedback you have had from teachers in your teaching union on that issue? I think that we do need more guidance and more practical guidance, because it is very vague and it is down to the interpretation of the local authorities. Many of the local authorities, due to the cuts over the years, have not got the expertise there anymore. Therefore, it is often left on the doorstep of the school to try and interpret. The expertise is not there inside the schools either, because with the changes in schools that have taken place, the more drive, especially in the secondary sector towards qualifications, things like ASN are the poor relation in the school. I would go even so far as that, if you looked into many of the secondary schools, the teacher that is responsible for ASN may do a completely different job in one authority than they do in another authority. They may be responsible for pupil behaviour, guidance, pastoral—they are all mixed up. Some authorities, guidance teachers, are doing ASN work. There needs to be some clarity of who those people are, but going back to the issues of our inclusion is that, if the youngsters are going to come in, they need to have all the support to give them a chance, and that is what is lacking. If there is support, it tends to be only in some subjects, so it does not go across the whole curriculum, so they are not getting access to the curriculum. The guidance is important, but it needs to be real for those who are dealing with it to understand it and not leave vagueness, because what vagueness does is an excuse to not fund it properly, and that is what is happening. Just to support what she was saying there, I think that, like you were saying, we fully support the ideals of mainstreaming, but again, it is a concern of how it works in practice. I think that mainstreaming, if funded well and training provided for all members of staff well, is brilliant. I think that when you do not fund it well, when you do not train people well than what she was indicating there, it becomes a bit dangerous for kids with additional support needs. Instead of getting fully rounded support to be integrated as part of the school, you become something that is stuck on the side, which is given half-hearted support and, again, with half-hearted specialisation. One of the things that we asked the Scottish Government was about the numbers of additional support needs teachers in the Scottish system. We asked how many were there, if there was declining, if there was more. The answer that we got was that there were more teachers in education than ever before, which was a stock answer. Unfortunately, that did not get to the nub of what we were trying to get to, which is that we are concerned about the eroding of specialism within schools and the eroding of specialist knowledge. Again, what she was saying is that, to be an additional support needs teacher, you do not need any qualifications other than being a teacher. There is no set mandatory training required. There is no set development that you have to undertake for that position. We have thousands of ASN teachers up in the country who do incredible jobs to take it upon themselves to become specialists themselves. The question that I would have is, should that be on them? Should that be on them to figure that out, or should we have a system that is more robust in equipping our teachers with the skills and knowledge that they require to support children? Just to follow on from that point, there is a lack of qualifications for teachers to take ASN. We should be looking at other examples in other countries where ASN teachers are experienced teachers who have trained and become ASN teachers. We do not tend to do that. It tends to be whoever has an opportunity as a management opportunity to manage that sort of system, and they have to do most of it on their own. That is not how the system should be. It should be seen as a priority and something to aspire to. As I said earlier, it is the poor relation in many schools. We are hearing many stories of ASN teachers who were taken off their duties to cover vacancies and classes. That is not what they were there for. That tells you how the school views them. If there is a shortage, we will just drag them out and let the poor children do whatever they need to do on their own. That is happening, unfortunately, too often. On the subject of expertise, when a child comes to a school with additional needs, do you get a clinical or a psychological assessment of whether the teacher gets that? Really? If it does happen, it is after a long process to get to that particular point. I think that if you just look at the number of teachers that are learning support ASN in primary is reduced considerably in the last year, and those in the central have reduced as well. The expertise is that schools can wait many months for an assessment, and that is not fair, because in the meantime, the schools and the teachers are trying to do the best in the period in between. An ideal system would be to identify the youngsters at a very earlier stage before going to school and have that tracked throughout the system. That is one of the difficulties with each authority doing their own way of doing it. There is no consistency, and if the youngsters move across authorities, it is not followed. It is like a new process that has to begin. The authority surely has an assessment that they could pass on to the school, but that does not happen. It does not always get to the right people. The last point. Mr Searson, can I ask about the issue of teachers who are well trained in the area? The committee has been made aware of three special schools and there may be more, which are under capacity just now, namely that they have spaces for children who would perhaps be better looked after in a special school. Is the teaching profession making any comment about that? Is there a reluctance to suggest that those children might be better looked after in a specialist environment? The situation is that many teachers at schools are expected to keep and the youngsters in their schools, partly because they are financers. The amount of money that it is going to cost for that youngster to go to some of those places is that the council will do all it can because of financial restrictions to prevent that from happening. That is a mistake because what it means is that that youngster is frustrated and struggles in the school situation. The teachers cannot cope with them and unfortunately the thing that schools are prevented from doing now is excluding children from schools. Exclusion is not just a punishment, it is a youngster who cannot cope in the school environment. Therefore, what schools have been told is do not exclude the youngsters. You cannot go beyond that quota and therefore the needs of the individual youngsters are not being met. Some of our youngsters need to be somewhere else. I am not just talking about in specialist schools but in other units and other things to cope with. Unfortunately, as I said earlier, it is the biggest thing that we have had coming through in our paid dispute is that when we have asked members the question is what they are having to cope with inside schools, not just workload but pupil behaviour, the lack of support. If you like, the next number of months will be the major issues for the teaching unions. Mr Ward, do you want to come in? We are a membership organisation, so we have members all across the country. The things that we keep hearing time and time again is that even with the presumption of mainstreaming, what that means in reality for so many families is that they have to fight tooth and nail to get the appropriate placement for their child. What we have done is perversely created a system in which a child has to fail in a mainstream school to get the specialist place at the choir because, like students were saying, local authorities do not want to pay for it. That is an absolutely abhorrent situation because what you have got from our members affects other additional support needs as well, but you have autistic children who are being basically set up for a series of traumatic experiences and the family being set up for a series of traumatic experiences all to get their child to where it needs to be. That is not fair on the family, it is not fair on the child. It is also not fair on the teachers because teachers do not deserve to have that situation happen to them. They deserve the training and the skills to be able to cope with it or they deserve for that child to be in the most appropriate setting, not for them to have to mess up in their classroom. It was just really to make a point that I would caution against viewing bricks and mortar as the solution that we find is people. It is about how we take that specialist knowledge and that specialist expertise and insert it into the whole system, a whole system approach, because any success stories we hear is where a person has made a difference, it is not about where a setting has made a difference. There are children who will benefit from a specialist school placement. I am not here to say that we will never have specialist schools, but I would say that that is not the black and white solution where something is not going right in mainstream, that the solution is that a specialist placement would be better. It is about how we inject some of that specialist knowledge and expertise into making a success of mainstream placements as well. I was interested in what was being said there, Mr Searson, about the multiple different names for things. In particular, there are two different names that you referred to in your own evidence, which are co-ordinated support plans and child plans. Could any of the panel say something about their understanding of the difference between those and try to tease those out, please? At the ASN committee a couple of weeks ago, we had this discussion. There were a number of teachers from different authorities, and each of them called it something different and what it meant was something different. That is why I made the point earlier, that they are completely different and in the interpretation of what they are. I think that that is where we need some sort of common approach to what those various things are and, effectively, one name for it with the same guidelines of how those things are used. My understanding is that I am right that those are not just two different names for the same thing. Those are two fundamentally different things and two fundamentally different offerings to a child. Am I right? It depends on which authority you are talking about. That is why that is where the confusion is. Each authority seems to think that if we cut back on the CSPs, we can put something else in place, which is much more manageable. I think that that is the problem. They are not using what they should be using because they realise that there is a financial implication on it, but they introduce something different. As I said earlier, it is often left to the schools to determine how to make the most of that. I think that that is a problem as well. I can see this potentially being more difficult with the headteachers charter, with more empowerment to the schools and more control over that, is that they will then start to interpret their own plans as well. They will have the same problem that local authorities have, is that they will not be able to afford all the things that they will need to meet those young people. However, they should be all the same, but they are not, and different people are involved. Some of the plans that you have referred to have multi-agency involvement, some of them do not. It varies from each authority who is available to be put into those. That is very helpful. I am interested in hearing from the panel as well. Given that it looks as if the number of individualised education programmes and co-ordinated support plans decreased from 2011 to 2016, while the number of child plans increased, I would be interested to know what you feel the implication for that is for the child or for the young person and what you are taking on that specifically. My interpretation of that, as I said, is the difference in what we need to do. If you have different variations and how it is applied, the only people who are losing out at this are the youngsters themselves, because they are not going to get a plan that covers all their particular needs. It comes back again to the training of the teachers involved in this process. If they have not got the background and understanding, they will not know the full implication of what is available to them. I feel that that is why I say that training is so critical in all of this. Is that something that the panel wants to come in on as well? To restate the distinction between a co-ordinated support plan and a child's plan, a co-ordinated support plan is an education plan. A child's plan is a more hope—you might have a co-ordinated support plan as part of your child's plan. It was just to restate that understanding in terms of it being an education plan and a co-ordinated support plan. Obviously, having that statutory element to it in terms of enforceability and accountability. What we need, to James's point, is guidance and understanding in training on that distinction and how planning works in the round and how plans talk to each other. A more consistent approach to other plans. Co-ordinated support plans are fairly set in terms of what they should look like, but other plans that talk to them and set alongside them might need a bit more guidance and understanding. I would like to go back to James's opening comments about the impact that this is having on teachers and support staff. Can you detail that a little bit more? The committee has heard a lot about the knock-on impact that this is having on staff, and the impact that that has on all the young people that they are responsible for. Teachers are very committed to what they are doing. I have made them mention them twice on pay, and I will mention it again. Pay is not the only issue for them. A lot of teachers would say to you that they are not necessarily in it for the money. As a union, we would probably argue that teachers need to be well paid, and that the classrooms will not be vacant. The frustration that teachers have is that they are working up to the maximum in their contract, which is 22.5 hours contact time because of the cut-backs over the past few years. They are expected to focus on all the other things that they would do with their job, but they get very frustrated that if there are one or two youngsters there, they cannot make real contact with and understand, and sometimes they do not understand why that is the case. They seek support from others, and there is not a lot of support. Some people might say that that youngster is okay with me, but we do not always know why. Teachers get very stressed by that, because what they tend to do is to try to spend more time with that youngster, to prevent the frustrations of that youngster at the disadvantage of all the other youngsters in the class. That is why teachers themselves are desperate for support, but they want the expertise close to hand inside the school, not in the authority that they might see once a week or once every two weeks if they have time. The stress of teachers has gone up considerably, because they are having to deal with that on a regular basis. Sometimes the reasons for disruption are low-level disruption or behaviour, but it could be far other things as well, but they do not always know. It does not help that there is not the opportunity to understand that getting trained in some of those things is awareness in some instances, so that they can deal with some of the problems that they face. It is a vicious cycle of—I used to be a teacher myself, and I know very well the experience of not having enough time, having too many kids, wanting to give a child the time to really understand them, but not having the skills and the specialism to know what I can do in my classroom to support them, becoming frustrated with that child, and then that relationship breaking down and the whole thing becoming more challenging. I think that there is a resourcing issue about time, but I think that the thing that I would say is that there is something also about training and skills. One of our calls, and I know that everyone thinks that initial teacher education is the answer to everything, but we do. The problem is that, if you are a teacher training in Scotland, the quality of your training on additional support needs is also vastly variable, so you could go to an institution, for example, where you might get in your entire training maybe a half day or a couple of hours on additional support needs and, given a couple of pointers about where to look if you happen to have a kid that needs support in your class, or you could go to an institution where you actually get some really brilliant training, which is practical about things that you can do in your classroom to stop them being censored and overloaded. We are always saying that, actually, if you can make it work for the additional support needs child, it generally, speaking, works for everyone else as well, which I think is really powerful. In order to get to that point, there has to be an investment at some point in that training and education, and we would say that we would argue, the National Statistics Society and Children in Scotland and Scottish Autism would argue, that that point is actually an initial teacher education, where you need to lay a firm foundation that allows teachers to use that to develop a further one in their career to stop the cycle at the beginning. I will move on a little bit, but feel free to come back on anything that you missed there. I am interested in the points in the process at which the lack of adequate support and resource, whether it is the lack of any staff at all or the lack of staff with relevant training and expertise, is the most acute at the stage of identifying additional needs? Is it at the stage of placing of making the decisions around where a young person with particular additional needs should be? Is it entirely within the schools? Are there particular shortages within the local authorities? Where are the acute issues that come from a lack of staff and a lack of staff with the relevant knowledge? I would say that, because there is a lack of knowledge, it can be a long way into a child's career before these things are picked up. I think that that is why we need a co-ordinated approach from very early years right through the stage, because it shouldn't come us at a price. Some authorities, for example, at the moment using some of the PEF funding, some schools are using what they call a transition teacher to go into the primary schools to identify the youngsters, get to know the youngsters and do that first signal to the school that there are some youngsters who will need some additional support. That is a decision that the school has made itself, but that should be much more of a normal process. It takes too long, and I feel that it is that ability for the youngsters to get the best out of their education. The longer they get frustrated, the worse the problem becomes. As a colleague said there earlier, it could be that they have to mess up before somebody starts to notice it. I would argue that we need to look in a grown-up and real way and say what is the issue, and let's deal with it properly. Can it relate to something that Nick brought up before? You were talking about the challenge of getting accurate information in terms of teachers qualified to or teachers working with young people with additional needs. The staff census has undergone a number of changes. One of those changes is the merging of some categories. The number of additional support needs assistants will no longer be counted and published separately. It has been merged into people support assistant with the general classroom assistant category. Do you have any concerns about the impact that that might have? What I would say in terms of what I understand is the real interest in that data, because there is a real feeling that classroom support assistants or pupil support assistants are the various roles and guises that exist in the system. They play a huge role in supporting pupils who have additional support needs. They play a vital role in our scene as a crucial asset. Of course, keeping awareness and visibility of how many of them there are is important. What is more important is the work that they are doing and looking at the quality of support that is provided to them, training that is provided to them and what they are being deployed to do. We are in some places misusing the various roles that exist. That is maybe where the merging of all that data came from. One thing that we called for including the main was a consistent offering, a consistent role type, a consistent training type and a consistent quality of what that key and vital resource was delivering. We need to keep on top of the number that exists and that we do not want to see that decreasing, but we also want to look at what they are doing. There is plenty of research out there around effective deployment of classroom support and where it works and where it does not work, and that is about how it is deployed and how it is utilised and how people are scouted to be in that role. I think that it is a backward step because ASN support is very specialised work. When you start to blend other classroom assistants into that, you lose that expertise. Also, the assumption in the schools is that one is interchangeable with the other and the nots. I think that with the number of children with ASN, we need to be looking at, if anything, as a crude figure, if the Government likes lots of figures, that there should be a number of children going up, the number of people involved should be going up and not the other way around. It is interesting because in the chart that we supplied previously, page 23, where we looked at the number of authorities but took them in the order of number of children going down, there is such a big discrepancy in what each authority does. It is quite sad to think, could we compare Glasgow and Aberdeen? ASN staff in Aberdeenshire was higher than Glasgow. In the last week or so, we have heard that Aberdeen is talking about removing its ASN teachers and replacing them with ASN classroom assistants or classroom assistants. That does not help the situation. It is very important if we are going to use those statistics, test them properly and identify the skills that those people do and make them very different. If anything, a training programme for ASN support is equally, twice as important. The final point that she asked me was exactly what I was going to say. The problem is that, in reality, for the vast majority, she was saying that there was a difference between being a pupil support assistant and a classroom assistant. There absolutely is in the skills that you need to use in the different things that you need to be able to do with people in your understanding awareness of situations. The sad thing is, though, that there is actually no required difference in training. If you are not going to be a pupil support assistant working with an autistic person or two autistic people all day every day, there is no requirement that you have specialist training in autism. There is no requirement that you have specialist knowledge and understanding of what demonstrated those skills. Again, just like I was saying at the beginning, there are thousands of PSAs up and down this country that do incredible work and who are brilliant, but that is not enough. It is not enough that we just take it on good will that, actually, those people are really kind and they are very nice and they support people and they walk them to classes and they give them comfort. What we actually need them to be is skilled and we need them to have knowledge to support people properly. I had not heard about what was going to happen in Aberdeen, but that concerns me hugely that Aberdeen Council will be considering a move like that. I have one final question, convener, if that is okay. It is just on the direction of travel around this. This is the second time this session that the committee has been looking at additional support needs. We are revisiting the work that we have previously done in that kind of intervening two years. Has the direction of travel at local authority in school been towards better definition of those roles? There can be a disconnect between what is collected in the national census and what is happening on the ground. Is the census accurately reflecting the fact that, on the ground, there is an increasingly great area and those roles are increasingly overlapping because of a lack of definition and a lack of training? Or is there a disconnect between the census and actually there has been some progress towards more clearly defined roles? I would say that there has been, as I said there, the interpretation in schools where people are from different roles to expect to take on different tasks, but just looking at the figures, for example, in our figures we gave that the secondary learning sport and ASN teachers was 1215 in 2016. It is about the same. It is about one more, I think, in the latest information, but the number in primary schools is dropped by 10 per cent. When you go to centrally based ASN teachers, that is dropped by 23 per cent in a year. That does not tell me that things are improving. This is actually more cutting away from the vital support that is needed. One thing that I would add to that is that it does sound like things are not improving, but one thing that I would say that we have really noticed is that the will is there, that teachers want to be able to support additional support in these kids, that they want to be able to get more training, that they want to have the skills and knowledge to do it, and it is about can we as a system figure out how to supply that demand? Mr Scott, you indicated that you want to come in at this area here. Thank you. Further to those questions or the points that you are making about training, if I read the pupil census figures that were provided for 2017, in primary schools, the average number of pupils identified with additional support needs is running at 23.5 per cent, so one in five. We take an average class of 30 children in an average Scottish primary class. There will be at least six of those children with some kind of additional support need. Your contention this morning is that those six kids are not getting the support that they need because the training has not kept track or kept up with the growth in identified needs. The answer to that is? The answer to that that we would argue is for great consistency in the initial teacher education about what training people get. As Shema said, you cannot get all your training, but if we have a level of consistency and agreement between different universities about what that baseline looks like and then we have a system of professional development that people can access throughout their careers and that actually means something that builds upon things and expertise, and we have headteachers who are willing to allow people to do that and to release people who pay for it is a different question, then I think that that is the answer. Presumably the other related point to that is that as we expand nursery care in Scotland, a lot of more young children, i preschool children, will be seen by teaching staff, by nursery staff at a younger age, and therefore their needs could be identified earlier, which would be by definition a good thing. Have you any sense of training it for nursery staff prior to so that those children are identified and therefore the statement that goes with those children as they go into primary school can help classroom teachers later up the school ages? You are 100 per cent right that the earlier diagnosis is put in place or the earlier understanding of a child's condition is put in place, the difference that can make to the outcomes of that child's life is huge. I am not aware of any system of training for nursery teachers. I want to thank you very much for that. Maybe I could ask Shema Searson about secondary teachers, because again the same pupil census, Covina says that I think the figure is 29.6, a thick end of one third, which I find really quite astonishingly high and now identified with special needs. Again, your sense of training for secondary teachers? Training is a vital component, but all teachers work as part of a team. They are not isolated even though they may be in a classroom on their own most of the time, but they do need a support of all other people and other experts. I am using that word because there is a whole range of experts that we could be using as supporting youngsters in schools. I do feel that initial teacher education is a starting point, but it is only a starting point. It is often just to raise awareness. We should be talking about proper professional development right through teachers' careers, right up until the very end, because things are changing. I mean, we at the moment are running ourselves as a union, some autism awareness courses for our members in their own time, because people are asking us for, can you do something about this? That is just one example. What we found is that most of those people who came were very experienced teachers who had not had the opportunity to understand some of those things, but it is building that team. I will give you an example. When somebody learns to drive, that is like a teacher coming out of university. They know how to drive, but it is only with the experience that they become much more experienced drivers. However, when somebody asks them to repair the car, they cannot do that in a one-hour session on a training day. You need to have experience and proper training. It is the content of the training and not just a superficial training, a tick-box exercise, or we spent an hour on a training day doing something, therefore you know what to do. The answer is, that is not how it works. Can I clarify a point that you made to Ross Greer just a minute or two ago? Your argument in the context of classroom assistants is that they have not had any training whatsoever. Is that in terms of additional support needs? That was what Nick Scott said. Well, some will have had training and some will have opted to have training, and that is brilliant, but again, it is the inconsistency. To give me some, what does it do? Do we know how many? No. No. And there's no systemic programme or system for training people up across different local authorities, or some local authorities will have their own ones, but again, it's patchwork. It's patchwork. Okay. Thank you very much. Good morning to the panel. I'd like to pick up on some things that you, Ms Eerson, said earlier on about there need to be experts in our schools. I think we need to be a bit careful about suggesting that there's not already expertise in some of our schools, and I think, in particular, with regard to secondary schools, we heard from Professor Sheila Riddell last week about additional support needs departments, and in most of our secondary schools, we'll have a support for learning department at least. So, would you accept, perhaps, that some of the challenge is that, actually, it's not about a reduction in teachers, it's a move to employing ASN teachers centrally, and perhaps we're losing knowledge, therefore, at a school level because there's essential employment of ASN teachers as opposed to NSFL departments? Well, see, if somebody is centrally employed, they're not in the school day-to-day, and therefore not always available, and when they are coming into schools, it's probably to give advice and support, but not necessarily supporting the youngsters in the classroom, and that's what some teachers actually want. So, I feel that we need people with expertise at the local authority level, but we need the expertise in the school as well. Unfortunately, as we said earlier, some of the teachers go into ASN because they're very committed and want to be there, but they're not necessarily trained up to the right levels, and I think that the schools need to understand that if they're going to encourage people to do those things, they'll need to invest in them to actually be trained and be more useful in the school environment. I would agree with that, but you also don't need to have any qualifications to become a principal teacher. So, for example, I didn't need any additional qualifications to become a PT in a secondary school, so this isn't just about ASN teachers, we should be looking in the main, I suppose, qualifications, if that's what you're suggesting. I would argue that principal teachers do need to be trained before they become PT. But there is no requirement at the present time. There isn't a problem, but I would argue that all members of staff for any management position or leading the subject need to be trained in those areas. I think that there's a baseline expectation that happens, but there is no requirement, so I think that we need to be careful at just narrowly looking at ASN provision and saying that it doesn't happen here because it doesn't happen across the piece at the moment. I don't think—because it doesn't happen now, it doesn't mean that it's right, that's why I'd make the point. I think that it's very important that we do plan and manage our staff and develop our staff to their full potential. We've got lots of people who are getting promoted into posts who struggle for a long while because they've not been prepared for it. So, we need to be careful just because it's happening now without those things. We need to be able to say what's a better way of doing it. So, on that point about supporting staff then, I was quite taken by Kelly Thorpe's point with regard to the importance of people on that, not just being about bricks and mortar. The SSTA's submission points to 93 per cent of ASN people's now being taught mainstream classes all the time. I think that he also hit upon a pretty critical and educationally controversial point, and that's the potential for disruption and potential impact on overall attainment. He also talked about the impact on teacher stress and potential absenteeism. If this is about getting the right people to meet interventions, as Kelly Thorpe told us, do we need to consider how our local authorities look after staff wellbeing? First, definitely. I feel that we need to really address teacher health and wellbeing, and I think that we play lip service to it at the moment, and local authorities try to do something with it. However, we've got to be realistic. If teachers are stressed in the classroom, it's the responsibility of all of us to try to prevent that stress or address that stress. I think that it would be a nice situation where we could be that teachers felt comfortable, and I'm using this as a good example. Some of our inexperienced teachers are frightened to express to senior colleagues that they're struggling with some of their youngsters because they feel it's a failing on their part, and I think that we need to be grown up and say to actually know everybody has a struggle with some of our youngsters, and we need some support and make that what I refer to as a more collegiate way of working. It was going back to what you were saying about ASN teachers being employed centrally and not locally. Seamus made a really good point, which is the idea of what is effective development of you as a teacher. Actually, there's quite a lot of evidence that the most effective professional development that teachers can undertake is classroom coaching, so the idea of someone sitting in your class watching you teach, providing you advice as you teach, moderating and changing your behaviour, doing it again and practising. Now, if that is what a lot of the research is saying is the most effective way of doing it, you're quite unlikely, as a teacher, particularly if you feel some of the things that Seamus was just saying, to be happy with this person you see once in a blue moon coming in and observing your classroom. What you need is a collegiate person, someone that's there every day that you can build a relationship with, and who you can have a relationship or trust with. And I think that's potentially what starts to lose that sort of innate trust, which I think is a bit of a shame. Okay, and just a final point then. It's with regard to the increase in social, emotional and behavioural difficulties as a category of ASN, which obviously increased the most amount between 2010 and 2017. I asked the question last week about this dramatic increase and whether or not there might be a link politically, and I appreciate if the panel members don't feel they are able to mention this, but we had a change of government in 2010, we had a change of administration in Westminster, the beginning of austerity, lots of changes to the benefits system. We know that poverty impacts upon a child's ability to attain and to reach their potential. I wonder if you're aware of any analysis, therefore, in terms of austerity on ASN in particular in the classroom. What we are aware of, so I don't have any statistics, I'm sorry, but what we are aware of is that our members come to us talking about increased existential stress. So often, families of autistic people have to talk to us about fighting for their rights in education, fighting for their rights in other areas. Particularly with elements of universal credit that have come in, there has also been a feeling that they have to fight for their rights of their children as they become adults and what that looks like. We have examples of people who their child is non-verbal, very, very, very high need, requires incredible specialist provision the whole time, being asked to turn up for a PIP assessment and say, well, they can't do that, and they say, well, we can come to the hospital and do it with them there, and it's just that it's not appropriate and it's not right. That level of stress really starts to affect people, so we know that that's been a thing. Obviously, we can't say that's down to a change in government. We can just see that we've noticed this. The obvious thing is austerity and poverty. It does come into the schools because schools have what goes on in society, and the frustration with some of the youngsters of it comes in with it as well. I feel that also there's been a change in that the expectations on teachers to try and do more and more makes it equally as difficult. I would like to say that it was to change in government, but I'm not able to, but I do think the cutbacks over the years we've seen, and if you like the practical piece of that, is where these people existed in the past, when they left, they weren't replaced. You can see that in every school. Those are the things that have gone by the way, and it tends to be, whereas if you lose an English teacher, you have to replace an English teacher. If you lose an ASN teacher or an ASN classroom assistant, you muddle through, and that's what's unfortunate, what's happening. That's one example, a practical example of it. You see that in every school. Just before we move on, if I could ask a question in relation to some of the conversations that I had around statistics and the fact that some of the categories were dropped because there wasn't consistency across local authorities in definition and reporting, and that we're talking about the numbers of ASN pupils, we heard last week that the spectrum of ASN pupils is very different, so someone with a temporary need of a broken arm in the school would be categorised and counted as one additional support needs, along with someone who doesn't have English as a first language additional support need. Given the fact that we do have plans of some kind in the schools for a lot of the young people who have been assessed as needed, do you think that it is a pretty blunt instrument just to count them that way? Do you think that there's a possibility to actually capture the need of the young person, which maybe would help local authorities' plan for what's what actually is needed in a classroom because one child categorised as autistic could have a very different support need from another child in that category? Yes, absolutely. I think that it does happen. If you look at the range of different plans, they go into a lot of detail, they talk about what those needs look like and what they might present as and where they come from. What would be really interesting—there was a bit of a statistical analysis on that—would be fascinating. I've not seen one, but I would be really interested to see that, because you're right. It is a broadening category, and it's a bit like autism itself. It's a spectrum, and the different needs in that spectrum might require quite different approaches. In terms of the numbers going up, I would argue that the numbers have always been there. It's just that teachers are now more able to identify that there's a need of youngsters. I don't see it as a—it could be a slight increase, because for other reasons, but I would say that there has always been a need of youngsters in the schools. It's just that we've not always been able to identify them, but we do need to address that. I think that what was suggested there—I think that we do need an in-depth analysis of ASN, because we should be measuring what we think is important, not what somebody else thinks is important. If we understand ASN properly in all the different categories and all the different elements to it, then we can determine what statistics we want. Just crude statistics on classroom assistance as one and blending them all together is not helpful. I think that we need a detailed research into the complex needs of ASN, which is then identified. Possibly it might be better to identify what funding would be needed for each of those types of categories. At the moment, we're only guessing, I would imagine, in most cases. Dr Allan, you want to do something? Thank you. It was really just to pick up on your point there about languages, and really just to ask your views a bit more about that. I've got a bit of an interest in languages, and although I would have no doubt that there are children and young people who require additional interventions because of the fact that English isn't their first language, I just wonder what you're feeling about the fact that there are lots of children for whom having two languages is quite a good thing intellectually. It's quite a good thing and something that we should celebrate. How do you draw the distinction in putting this large group of children who perhaps don't have English as their first language into that category? How is the distinction drawn between young people who require help and young people who may be entirely fluent and whose bilingualism we should be actually celebrating? I know that it's a different area than what we've talked about. When I used to teach in London, in East Ender London, we had a big influx of Bangladeshi children, and the assumption is that they've all got the same needs. No, they haven't. Some youngsters coming there would have a higher level of language ability than most of the children that I was teaching in the area, and others hadn't even set foot in a school. It is a real benefit to a school if a school is able to harness that expertise, because it's a tremendous ability. I'm particularly passionate for every youngster throughout their school career, but building on the language that youngsters bring into the school should be seen as a benefit and not just saying that we're just going to focus on particular languages, because that's all we can offer. I think that there's another challenge there for schools to address that. Do you think that it's helpful that all of those children that you've just described are counted in the statistics point of position? I think that they should be counted, but they should be counted in one block. They need to have a whole range of their abilities in their own languages. It's just a really quick point on that, but my understanding of it might not give rise to an additional support need. That's the factor that gives rise to additional support needs, so you might not categorise all those children as having an additional support need, because if they're fluent in English, they probably don't have an additional support need. If that's how it works in practice, I can't say, but that is my understanding of how it should be applied. I also used to teach in East London in a school that had lots of banglots. We obviously need to compare notes a bit later. The thing that I would say is that what's interesting about the difference with English in the additional language is that often what we would find is that when children would come in, they needed very intense support, but there's a progress through that. The intense support gets to a point where they don't need that support anymore. Like you were saying, that additional language actually acts as a wonderful cushion in support for them to explore English, for example, more in literature and bringing in different parts of cultures. I suppose there's a more obvious journey there from I can't speak English to I can't speak English or I need less support speaking English. If you've got additional support needs where that journey is not linear, in fact, there may not even be a destination at the end. Thanks very much. I was struck by what was said earlier about PEF money being used to employ a transition teacher. I've been out teaching 20 years. It was routine for the learned support teacher to go to all the feeder primaries and get information in all the young people and identify ones that they really needed to look after when they came into secondary school. I'm astonished if we're not. That tells me something about what's happening in our schools if that's regarded as unusual. I'm quite interested in looking at the point where this policy is no longer a policy. First of all, around this question of flexible timetables, can you give some examples? I've read the enable report and the report from the National Autism Society and so on. It feels to me that some of these young people who have got a flexible timetable are exactly what you said present but not included. Do you have examples of what the variation is around that and what that might mean for individual families? Yes. I think that some of that comes through and is included in the main. We heard stories of young people attending school one hour a week. I do think that there is value perhaps in looking at some of the data on home education and perhaps doing a bit of a deep dive into that in terms of understanding why some young people are moving to home education because my suspicion and through some of the anecdotal evidence that we receive is because they are not being supported and cannot be supported in their school at present. There are pretty stark stories out there in terms of either part timetable or, in some occasions, I would describe it more as an informal exclusion in terms of it's not recorded but parents are routinely being asked to take their child home and that's missing from all of the data as those young people's experiences and what's their life going to look like once they reach the age of 18, if they've not been at any form of schooling or very little form of schooling. There is some data in terms of those part timetables but there is some gaps in the data in terms of the number who have elected for home education but has that been because they've got to the point where there's no other option? Just to build on that, we wouldn't call them informal exclusions, we would call them unlawful exclusions, so those are people who are being asked to stay at home when they have an entitlement to education and it's against the law and it's happening all the time and it's a scandal to be completely honest. When it comes to part timetables, I think there is some nuance to require because actually part timetables can be hugely supportive to children with additional support needs so it can be really meaningful to say that actually do you know what maybe afternoons on a Wednesday said really struggles, we know that so would it be possible for him not to do that or why don't we give him a bit more space, a bit more time and these can make a big difference actually to children that need support in adapting or that can sometimes feel overwhelmed and need time out and things but there's a tipping point where a part timetable becomes an unlawful exclusion when you're being asked to pick up your child every single day without notice because that child, because they're not able to cope with your child, there's also a tipping point where what we've seen is some examples of is part timetables sort of starting off you know the idea being that we'll start off with you then just coming in one or two days a week and then we'll build back up to them being fully back at school and it never happens, it never happens and then the question starts to come from us is if that child is still entitled to an education, which I think we would argue that they are still entitled to an education and if they're saying that that education can't happen at school, the question is what makes them think that they're going to get a better quality of education at home, where has the decision made that that's the best place for them to be and then what does that education at home look like so just like we're talking about the lack of standardisation across the board, there's a lack of standardisation of what home education looks like for children who are being educated at home so there's no minimum hours of education so some councils used to work on a system where you know we would provide five or ten minimum hours a week of education materials for children to access and to go through doesn't exist which is really sad anymore and I think also we have to talk about again about the quality of that so that could look like some teachers doing absolutely amazing work and you know hosting seminars for kids and having online schools which can be brilliant or it can look like here's a worksheet fill it in and that that's not being overdramatic that is literally what children are still getting now and there has to be a greater consistency there with part time timetables again just to go back to the point they are useful and they can be useful but there can also be tools that can become abused and can very quickly become a means to unlawfully exclude a child I mean again I did that job in the 80s which was supporting young people to kind of integrate back in and it was all about flexibility I think my concern my sense is that sometimes parents are actively choosing to say or agreeing with this simply because they want their child to be safe so that becomes a difficulty but I just wonder whether we had this conversation earlier about specialist education versus mainstreaming is there a danger that you get to point the simple because the reality on the ground is that there isn't the support in the school that's relevant and meaningful for the young person that you will see a drive towards people saying well actually I don't want my child to have to fail before they go to specialist place and you end up it's a self-fulfilling prophecy you prove that the policy is wrong by just the reality of what people experience have we got as far as that yet because I'm aware that teachers in their when they've been raising issues around pay dispute they talk about work on the talk about stress and they do talk about the lack of support for young people with additional support needs is there a danger that you actually get to place where the policy is not being lived and then there will be a move to just see what we need to change the policy I absolutely think there is a danger of that if we don't get it right and I also think we have a responsibility to internationally we have we have taken very progressive steps and we have a responsibility to get it right but we we of course don't want young people suffering and struggling through that to prove up to prove a point to prove a policy but it is the right move we can get it right we just need to take a whole systems approach and we need to to continue the investment in specialism that's not special places it's specialism and experts and knowledge and understanding that's training that's whole whole career training but it's also experts and specialist knowledge that can come in and provide that additional support and and I think that's what we what we have a responsibility to to get right and to get right soon to fix what we have heard over the last 16 years the last generation and continue to improve I suppose my last question unison Scotland which represents classroom assistance in their submission they argued that in a system with finite resource additional support can a wider implication it said that if a parent manages successfully get a resource for their child it simply involves shifting from somebody else is that a problem to me the thing about the csp's and the plans is like a self-censorship I'm not going to put that in the plan because I know I can't access it and I wonder whether that is that that is also a challenge in the school that because the parent fights they get the extra resource but it's then lost somewhere else the system is not it's not guaranteeing increased support in the school if I could I mean I think there's a we need to make the policy work and make it real at the moment it's not that and I feel what you've just described where money is taken from one to another and it would be because a parent is more vocal than anybody else that they may get it and that's wrong that's fundamentally wrong but it does mean somebody else loses out so you could have like maybe talked earlier there could be five or six youngsters in a class but the one one parent is pushing and one youngster gets the support whether it's four or five probably as much need don't get that at all and I think we need to find the resource I think it's if we are really committed to making this you know this this work then that policy needs to be real for people and that unfortunately is going to need expertise and people coming in but it's going to need resource and preparedness to accept that the second best isn't good enough I think what I think sadly what unison presented there is a deficit model and I think that the current funding means that we work on a deficit model and I think that just like James was saying so I think if I'm going back to first principles and I mentioned this before I think presumption of mainstreaming is the right thing and I think it's the right way forward however if we do not fund it properly if we do not build a system to deliver it properly then we start to create a system which in some ways is worse than an older system and in some ways has all these perverse incentives and we're in a situation right now which exactly as you said Ms Lamont that actually we have a system that favours middle-class people that favours middle-class parents arguing and fighting and you know I'm not if it was my child I would be fighting and arguing and going mad as well they shouldn't have to do that we should have a system that says to them this is what we think that we should have a proactive system that is offering support because actually that won't then just happen to the middle-class kids that will also have a parent that will also am to the working class parents as well and I think that there's there's a social justice issue there that maybe we don't talk about enough that maybe should also be addressed I wondered if the I mean maybe to be controversial has been highlighted already we've got such a broad categorisation of what additional support needs are you know somebody suffers a bereavement then of course that's an episode in their lives and they have to be supported or there's a crisis in the family they have to be supported and it might then there might be some reaction in school is there a danger of the categories that catch everything that actually those young people and I'm not think young people should be set against each other but the children who are most vulnerable who have not just got social emotional needs but may have needs that if they're not made so not met probably they simply can't come to school and you need somebody with expertise to feed them to keep them safe and so on is there a danger that the system is perverse incentive that you can meet the needs of the those who are less needy at the expense of those who probably fought hardest to get into mainstream education in the first place because I don't want to say that so what I would say is that we haven't taken a position that the definition of additional support needs should change or anything along those lines what I would say is do some pupils who have learning disabilities get lost in the data yes I can see that with without a doubt and does that mean that they're not getting the support or we're not planning for the support that they need then yes perhaps it's just about more clarity in the data and more visibility in the data and the actual analysis it's not just about the data because what it's about is what we do with that and what that does in terms of the planning for the resources the planning for the support needs to be in place so it's more visibility of of maybe young people who require more support or from our perspective young people who have it a learning disability thank you thank you thank you I was going to ask about categorisation but I think that that solves that question I was interested in diagnosis and assessments and whether you felt that they were being used enough and were actually available to to classroom teachers and to schools because certainly my own local experiences that people are waiting years or being asked to rely solely on assessments made by the classroom teacher who may be when it comes to autism or other specialist learning difficulties doesn't doesn't necessarily have the expertise and also can't give can't give a diagnosis that sort of I don't know how to put it sort of I guess it isn't sort of respected by other professionals or is dismissed by a local authority okay I would say Mr Mundell that you are completely right about diagnosis being an issue that needs to be discussed and addressed I think that again and I suppose it's almost the theme of this of this session is about inconsistency and again there is massive variation in consistency in different local authorities and different health boards to both the diagnosis pathway but also how long that pathway takes and what can happen and I think just as Mr Scott said before getting an early diagnosis can be incredibly powerful and incredibly life changing both for a young person and for their family to access support at the moment from what we hear there are some places where you can get a diagnosis actually relatively quickly if you're in a school and there are some places potentially like your constituency where it can be an absolutely ridiculous process to have to go to and it's the first fight that a parent has to undertake and I think like we said before they shouldn't be having to have any fights so it's not fair. I think probably to some of the earlier points as well actually that the diagnosis of a learning disability you would expect would happen or you would hope would happen before you reach a school but for many parents it does not but that was maybe to the point that was made earlier about early years certainly we published some research in 2014 on early years and the journey to a diagnosis of a learning disability and that was absolutely our finding that it is a struggle that it can take years and what happens is that you're not getting access to the supports and services that you need in the meantime but ideally if diagnosis was made before school then actually you'd be planning for the support that is needed for that young person in the school environment as well. I'm just going to add to that it would be lovely for teachers to arrive into school and be told all the background information about a youngster and all the plans that are in place and all the support that teachers are going to get. I don't mean just on that day in the months beforehand so teachers are ready and able to address those things. We're far from that stage and it's often teachers are having to go back and say who is this youngster what support should they have and then you suddenly find oh it's in a process somewhere if the process has even started. So it would be nice to get to the situation where teachers are able to deal from day one with the youngster coming in and all the preparation and all the background and all the information available. Do you feel it's appropriate or fair to place the burden on classroom teachers to give parents a informal diagnosis of things like autism or other specific learning difficulties? I think that the relationship with a secondary school teacher would be that if they felt that there was something need their internal structures they would need to go through and an appropriate person would be the person who's got oversight of that to be in contact with the parents but again it's the ability to know what they're actually identifying a need is not necessarily the same as diagnosing what that need is and I think that's a major shift between the two. So but I think that it's appropriate that information is you know dialogue with the parents takes place and because it would be very wrong of a teacher to say that your youngster's got this and that when it's actually not the case at all. You think if teachers have been asked to do that at the moment that's wrong that's wrong and they've been asked by local authorities to do that as well. Mr Ward. A diagnosis of autism is a clinical activity. It's a clinical special activity. It must be undertaken we would probably say by doctors. It is completely inappropriate for teachers to diagnose well they can't it would it's ridiculous it was completely inappropriate for teachers to diagnose autism. It's not inappropriate for a teacher to say to a parent you know I've noticed some traits and do you have a diagnosis maybe you should talk to your GP that's not inappropriate that's good teaching that's that's having an awareness of the child and having a good relationship with the family and I think that's that's good but as Seamus says for a teacher of turn I've been saying your kid's autistic it's not it's not okay. Okay no thank you thank you for that I mean obviously it's more challenging for teachers when there are young people who've been waiting three years within the school system to see a CDAT team and I think you know I absolutely absolutely take the message and I think it's wrong people are having to to wait at all. I was going to ask on the point around parents taking their children out of school do you think that local authorities are actually encouraging families to do that? I've certainly come across cases where I think they allow stand-offs to go on so long with families and make the process so frustrating and difficult that it almost goes as far as to encourage parents that that would be the best option. I've probably been in a position to say that that was that was the an approach that local authorities were taking but I would say anecdotal evidence from parents is that they are left feeling like that is the only option for them so you I guess you can infer from that that there is there is something going wrong in the system in the dialogue that is reaching that point where parents feel that is the only option for them they're not making it through a proactive choice they're feeling that that is that was the only available route for them. And if you think about it you know this is a weird way to think about having a child but it's kind of a ticking clock so you know you have a child and there's only so many years of formal education that child has access to and if you're a parent in a dispute with a local authority and that clock is ticking and you're thinking right now nothing's happening they're stuck in limbo then you know there is an incentive for you to make a call that maybe isn't the right call to say well actually then we will just homeschool them I will find somewhere else and you know there's something again I don't have any data and I wouldn't want to see that local authorities were doing this deliberately because I don't have no evidence of that but there is something about the speed of the of the resolution of conflicts that there's a lot of it ones that have went on for a long time that I think by the length of the dispute means that parents have to make difficult calls okay no thank you and then on parents as well do you think we do enough to involve parents where young people are in the mainstream setting we certainly heard a focus group that we had as part of the education committee that a lot of parents found it maybe difficult and things had to go wrong before before they were sort of invited into the school to help and often they felt that they were the sort of expert when it came to their children and helping sort of put them in a sort of place or manage their behaviour such that they could actually be part of the classroom setting do you think schools do enough at the moment to to involve parents at the earliest stage some don't I think is the is the truth there are some examples of you know ultimately I think this isn't just for additional sport needs pupils partnership with parents is vital at all steps and you know for any any child making their way through school having a good relationship with that parent is really really key and I think for a child with additional support needs it's especially important I think there are some schools where those relationships are really well constructed where people have a lot of faith and trust and there are probably somewhere people do not are not treated as a partner but treated as a nuisance or pain or they're on the phone again and to be honest they should be on the phone because as we've discussed that seems to be the only way to get anything done and that's not right I think just to add a kind of secondary point on to that as well it's also about how schools can support parents with their child's learning at home because that that there's there's plenty of research out there around actually how do we support the continuous learning and learning in the home environment as well homework or just continuous learning and actually sometimes schools have discovered and found really good ways of of working with a young person the learning strategies that work and it's actually about how do we support the parents of that young person as well to continue that and reinforce that good work those good strategies at home as well as what's happening in the classroom so it's a really crucial relationship and it does work well in some places and and to next point it doesn't in others and there is a case of relationship breakdown for a lot of families in terms of that kind of battle that they're fighting and I finally can I just ask Mr Ward in terms of the not included not engaged not involved report I understand you and the other organisations represent have been in sort of continued dialogue with the government is there any update on that and what of the key asks from the report of the Scottish government and cabinet secretary committed to okay there is an update there is an update so we we wrote the report and it had nine asks and we met with the cabinet secretary and he was very nice very warm he took the issue very seriously he agreed that the commission around table which we had last week around the issue of initial teacher education and to get sort of all all of the big players along and invited so the GTCS was there the EIS was there the Scottish council deans of education coslow was there and this was to sort of explore the issue of could we be doing more in initial teacher education for autism and it was a very interesting discussion because it sort of started out of saying well you know the sort of a classic argument of you know if we're going to do it for autism like what about everything else and how do you fit it in but actually for the discussion we had at the round table we got to a place that we accepted that actually because of a number of different issues because of the prevalence of autism because of the seriousness of incidents that happen and also because of the autism is actually a little bit different than other additional support needs it's part of an identity it's a holistic condition about who you are and how your brain functions that potentially there was some work to do so what he's agreed to do is he's formed a working group with us and the Scottish council deans of education to explore the issue and that's really really positive and to be honest the the best bit that I heard from them was that the representative from the Scottish deans of education accepted a couple of things that we've actually talked about so he accepted for example there could be potentially greater standardisation of what initial teacher education and autism looks like and that we could maybe work on figuring out what that baseline could be because Education Scotland we're saying part of the problem that they have is that when you've got teachers who have got vastly different experiences come to them actually it's not clear so that's really positive I suppose I'm really really grateful for that I suppose the downside is that the other main calls that we called for haven't been answered so we asked we sent a letter and we didn't get what I would consider to be an adequate response I would say it felt a bit copy and pasted in terms of response to the calls that we made and that was disappointing and this letter was signed by 3000 of our supporters and the issues that weren't addressed so we feel that we're having the issue of teacher training about autism addressed and we're really happy with that we haven't had addressed the issue about stopping these unlawful exclusions there's been no process at progress in it there's been no acceptance that the ability to do so rests with government and we've asked for them to be formally recorded so at least we have an idea of the data and we have an idea of how much it is happening again that has not been agreed to yet which is a shame but we'll continue to engage with government on it and then the other one that hasn't been agreed with yet either is something that we talked on here which is approve improve the numbers and availability of specialist teachers in the education system that was the answer we got where we just the overall number of teachers has increased which again it's great we love it but we'd like more information about specialist teachers and we'd like to work with government constructively on what does that mean to be a specialist teacher and how can we make sure that we've got a gold quality standard so that actually no matter what school that your child goes to you know that that additional support needs teacher has a certain level of expertise to support your child well so we've made progress we're pleased with the progress we've made and we thank the government for that but I think there's still a lot to do thank you thank you okay thank you that's my kind yes I'm just picking up on a lot of the things that have been said do you think the policy would work better if there was a sort of standardised more of a standardised framework across local authority areas in regard to data definition of ASN use of csps really everything we've been talking about do you think it's too piecemeal I'll just like your opinion on that that's what we need and that's what teachers need so what you're suggesting is exactly what we do we need to move forward and we would support that okay thank you anyone else also I think so many of the issues that have been raised today come from this this issue of you know inconsistency across different borders and boundaries and we have to be honest that these are artificial lines drawn in the sand you know and someone living one street down can have a completely different experience and sadly what that means is for a lot of times it's a classroom lottery for autistic kids and their families from our perspective so I think we would definitely support a greater standardisation and you know as Dr Allen was saying even the phrasyology you know we want to offer guidance but how can we offer guidance when it's called five different things and it means five different things in different places it's really tough and I think it would make a big difference Kelly? Yeah just to say that we would also agree in terms of there being pockets of really great practice and actually how do we make that universal and I think when we're talking about resources when we're when each area is having to create and reinvent the wheel and create their own version of things actually that has a resource implication and actually if we could provide something that was a baseline element of kind of standardisation then absolutely that would that would free up resources for other things thank you thank you I think that concludes questions from the committee so can I just thank all the panel members for the time this morning it's been a very helpful very interesting exchange with the committee and I'm going to move into private session and close to the public