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All children and young people should receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. Local authorities are under a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and review the additional support needs of their pupils.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities has reached a record high of £926m in 2022-23. The Scottish Government has continued to invest £15m per year since 2019-20 to help authorities respond to the individual needs of pupils and provides over £11m of funding each year to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

It should be noted that between 2012-13 to 2022-23, the real terms average spend per pupil in both primary and secondary schools has increased from £6,170 and £8,349 respectively in 2012-13 to £7,075 and £8,766, respectively.

The number of pupils identified with additional support for learning needs has increased markedly since 2010 and there continue to be year on year increases. This is partly driven by a change to how ASN statistics were gathered in 2010.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.