Seòmar agus comataidhean

There are undoubtedly challenges. Mr Rennie touches on the issue of behaviour, and the committee will know that there are strong links between additional support needs and behavioural challenges. We must be mindful of that, but we must also be mindful of the fact that children with an additional support need are far more likely to be excluded. Therefore, if we are meant to have an inclusive education system, there is a challenge in that respect.

More broadly, the challenge in schools is well documented. Mr Rennie has cited evidence from a teacher, and I am sure that we all know teachers—I certainly do—who would echo some of that challenge. However, supporting children with additional support needs is a fundamental responsibility for every teacher in Scotland, and they should be trained and supported to respond to those young people.

There is a challenge at the current time. The additional support needs measure can sometimes be quite monolithic. Once you delve into it, you find a range of different needs sitting behind the 37 per cent of our young people who currently have an additional support need. As a measure, therefore, it can cover things that lie underneath—things that, say, might be at a low level in terms of the additional support that is needed. We should be mindful of that, too.

The other thing to be mindful of is that some schools—in fact, many schools—are supporting children with additional support needs very well. Last week, ahead of today’s committee appearance, I was thinking about Craigie high school in Dundee, which I have visited and which is doing some fantastic work with its pupil equity funding to support children with additional support needs. The sort of holistic, inclusive approach that that secondary school has adopted is really changing outcomes for those young people. Therefore, I accept the challenge, but I know, too, that some schools are responding to that challenge differently.

Perhaps—this is where I question the role that bodies such as Education Scotland will play in the future—there is a role to be played in not just exemplifying good practice but sharing it across the board. Where there is challenge, there are opportunities. In addition to pupil equity funding, we have examples of Scottish attainment challenge funding being used to provide the additionality that is needed in schools.

Broadly speaking, there is a challenge here that I do not shy away from, but the alternative is to move away from the presumption of mainstreaming. From all that I have seen of the evidence that the committee has taken, I do not think that anyone around the table this morning would be in favour of that.

I think that the committee has taken evidence on that, with the focus on school culture. I think that that is part of it—it is about how you can support that holistic school culture.

It brings us back to Michelle Thomson’s question. Right now, schools are dealing with lots of different things. They have to raise attainment, look at our programme for international student assessment statistics—indeed, committee members were putting questions about that to me before Christmas—and respond to attendance issues, because we have real challenges with persistent non-attendance, which is an issue that I would like to come back to at some point. The fact is that we also need to support our children and young people, and, historically, we have not been very good at doing that.

When I was at school—that is not so long ago, although I will be 40 this year—many children with additional support needs were removed from the classes that I sat in because they were seen as a problem and a challenge, and they were put elsewhere. I worry that the current public debate is moving us back into that space. That is not where we want to go. Teachers want support, and they need wraparound provision.

Part of that support is the investment that we have put into pupil support assistants. I am pleased that that investment has been held at its current level this year and that we have increased the number of pupil support assistants. I realise, though, that Mr Rennie might have a follow-up question on that in relation to staff specialisms, which I am also mindful of.

We have a strong and inclusive education system in Scotland. Indeed, it was one of the strengths that came out of the national discussion that was published last year, and we should celebrate it, but I do not deny the tension that exists at the current time. We all need to reflect on the fact that part of the issue is that we are post-pandemic and that the same malaise across the system, whether in relation to attendance, attainment or additional support needs, is being felt in a number of other jurisdictions. The Welsh are struggling with similar challenges, and the situation down south is very similar.

Having looked at some of the evidence that the committee has taken on that, I would have to say no, I am not convinced that we have it right, and we need to reflect that in the ASL action plan update. In fact, officials and I were discussing the issue earlier today and on Monday. We might come on to this when we talk about the role of the First-tier Tribunal. Parents often feel that they have to fight against the system to get their voices heard and their young person diagnosed, and that does not reflect the intention behind the 2004 act.

As a result, we need to recalibrate the balance post-pandemic. Things have got more difficult. Undoubtedly, things were challenging before, but the pandemic compounded the difficulties. That said, I was struck by some of the evidence that the committee has taken in that respect, particularly on the role of the tribunal. Therefore, we will be mindful of that as we respond through the ASL action plan, and I am also keen to hear the committee’s recommendations on the matter.

From what I have seen, I think that it is difficult to say, because, as Mr Rennie knows, the level of input in his constituency might be different from the level of input in other parts of the country. One of the things that I, as education secretary, grapple with is the variance across the system, school by school and local authority by local authority. It is difficult to give a monolithic answer such as, “Yes, it’s not good enough and we need to improve it.” I broadly support that view, but we need to get into some of the detail, too. For example, some schools might have excellent speech and language provision, while in others that provision might have been reduced. The Government needs to reflect on that. If a local authority has made that decision, we need to ask where the support for children and young people will be provided.

The committee will recall that, last year, we published data on speech and language delays among our youngest children—those aged zero to 2—and among our poorest citizens from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds. I have been struck by the fact that, following the pandemic, there are real challenges with those young people coming back into formal education as they progress from early learning and childcare to primary school.

Mr Rennie has touched on a really important point. We have invested in Education Scotland specifically in relation to speech and language, and we now have a team at national level going out to provide the support that he talked about. However, that team has only so many members.

We need to upskill and support the profession, but we also need to recognise the role of local government, which brings us back to Mr Kerr’s point. This cannot be a Government-only endeavour. For example, I want COSLA to be involved in building the new centre of teaching excellence, because I want it to have buy-in. The centre could provide an offer not just to the profession, but to our young people with additional support needs.

I think that was a partnership process.

In my experience, that is not really the role of Government, so what I have said here today is not a change in policy. I have listened to the evidence that the committee has taken about educational support needs, and I think that we should reflect that better in our practice. That might mean working with the Scottish Futures Trust to provide clearer guidance on the issue in the future.

I have named a number of large schools, including some in Mr Rennie’s constituency, one of which I attended. We should be careful about how large schools meet the needs of a cohort of young people who are different from other children, need different support and can therefore often get lost in the mainstream. We know that. How does that work in a much larger school, particularly when some of those young people have come from very small schools in rural areas?

It is worth putting on the record that the Government has supported local authorities to improve the quality of the school estate quite substantially since 2007. Just over 60 per cent of schools were in good or satisfactory condition in 2007. Today, the figure is just over 90 per cent, and that is because—

That is set out in the code of practice, but I should say that we have sought to update that. That update will be coming, and it might help to provide further clarity. I think that the point that you are making, convener, is that, in the range of ways in which schools and local authorities respond to additional support needs, they often repurpose classrooms and might, therefore, seek to update the contents of the classroom to meet the needs of their children and young people. Through the updated code of practice, there is perhaps an opportunity for us to specify—more so—what that should look like. However, that is already in the code of practice.

I think that we could look at that in the code of practice. Of course, it depends on the school building that the member of staff is working in, but I think that we could specify that in the updated code of practice. There is room for us to do that.

We have the role of the lead teacher, which was created back in 2021 and which the committee may have taken evidence on. That role gives opportunities for staff to specialise but stay within mainstream provision. For example, there is an opportunity to do that with additional support needs. The General Teaching Council for Scotland has undertaken further work on accreditation in relation to additional support needs, so there are opportunities for staff to specialise in that regard, too.

More generally, as I tried to rehearse in my response to the convener, certainly in secondary schools, there used to be a staffing structure that looked to support things such as behaviour. That does not exist in the same way any more. To go back to Mr Kerr’s point, there is a more general approach that looks at pupil support in the round. However, if staff want to specialise, they should be able to do so, and the lead teacher role allows them to do that.

That role has not been as popular as we hoped it would be, and I am pretty pragmatic about that. There are a number of challenges post-Covid that mean that staff might not be interested in the role or in specialising, but I am keen to work with the teaching unions on how we can encourage the use of the lead teacher role, because that is an opportunity.

I accept that we have a leadership role, which is why we ring fence funding for teacher numbers and pupil support assistants. However, the question is specifically about specialism. In accepting responsibility, short of my directing local authorities, which I do not want to do, I am trying to see a resolution.