Chamber and committees

You will have been working on that for a while; that aim has been there for years. Why is it that the evidence that we have from teachers and parents consistently says that there is a variation? I am concerned about that. There appears to be a lack of progress in becoming more consistent. How are you measuring whether you are having an impact on levelling out improvement across authorities? What work are you doing on that at an authority level? Pamela Di Nardo talked about scaling up, and part of your remit is to do that.

I agree with what both of you have said. However, we have been taking evidence about Covid, and it is important to put across the view from inside the profession that additional support needs is a very specific term that covers those who are not yet diagnosed, as well as those who have been diagnosed and who experience difficulties with and barriers to learning. It is true that additional needs have come up time and time again, but the needs that have come up are those of young children suffering because of Covid. Those needs and additional support needs are two different things—we must remember that. Although I do not disagree with what you have said, I want to correct the idea that is in your heads. You must not conflate those two things.

Experts are starting to note that, sometimes, when parents say that they think their child is autistic and they want them assessed, the early years practitioner says that, actually, in their professional opinion, the child is not hitting the markers for that and, instead, they have suffered from a lack of stimulus and need a bit of speech and language therapy. I hope that that gives an example of the difference.

The petition concerns additional support needs as per the tight parameters of the legislation.

I have a practical question. How do you monitor the process and how often do you meet? Does it happen infrequently or is it regularly in the calendar? Is the approach embedded in your practice?

So, the schools are empowered, confident and supported enough to be able to respond to the sometimes very bespoke needs of their local school communities. At that session, I asked a couple of the headteachers whether they felt supported by their local authorities to make quite difficult decisions on competing demands and priorities. They said that they felt supported. It is worth passing that on to you. Celebrate the successes.

Gerry, do you have anything to add to what Mark Ratter has said?

Thank you. Did anyone want to come in on my second question?

From an educationalist’s point of view, we need to consider the issue very carefully. Directing methodology and pedagogy is a tricky area. From what I can see, the petition asks us to do that and to go down a certain route. I have taught synthetic phonics for over 30 years, but I have also taught the other methods. At the moment, in initial teacher education, they are trying to use a variety of those approaches. I am not commenting on whether they are doing it well enough.

There are technical flaws to synthetic phonics, because there are issues about pronunciation and how neurodiverse kids come into it. It also does not solve the issue of dyslexia. I wonder whether those issues are all behind that work. Obviously, I was not there during the previous session, but all of those issues have come to me, so, as much as I would love to get stuck into this, I wonder what our role is. Is it our role to direct the way that we teach reading and roll that out? That is what the petition is looking for, and I am not sure that that is our role.

Yes, I know.

Ruth said exactly what I was going to say—thank you for that, Ruth. I have no issue with doing what is proposed, but I am mindful of the impact on our work programme and what we would give up in order to do the petition justice—and it deserves justice.

I have been fascinated and hooked by everything that has been said. A lot of it resonates with the evidence that I took from headteachers from the West Partnership a couple of weeks ago, so I will come on to that.

I will talk a little bit about collective agency, which is part of that renewed mission. Sometimes, schools have felt a bit isolated over decades. Having worked in the field for many years, I am glad that schools are being recognised as part of the picture in addressing the poverty challenge and that there is recognition of the need for a multi-agency approach. That is fantastic to see.

Regarding that collective agency between the Government, which sets policies, local authorities, which implement those policies, and third sector organisations and community partners, will the witnesses give me a flavour of success stories from their local authorities and what has not gone so well? What challenges have they faced working with partner agencies?

That makes me think that, although there might be consistency within a local authority or within learning clusters, the challenge is the variation across Scotland’s 32 local authorities. The dilemma that I am grappling with is that we might have collective agency and the empowerment agenda, but how do we ensure consistency across the whole of Scotland?

I invite anyone to chip in on that, once Tony McDaid has dealt with my previous question.