Chamber and committees

Yes.

That is helpful. I have a specific question for Linda O’Neill before we move on to the next area of questioning. All three witnesses have agreed that Scotland’s local authorities faced challenges in consistently identifying which young people were vulnerable. You mentioned care experienced young people. Were care experienced young people seen as being, by definition, more vulnerable? Were they offered places at hubs as a matter of course, or was that cover patchy? It would be helpful for the committee to know that.

It is not about accountability; it is about understanding the spend. In April 2022, there will be an initial £145 million to allow local authorities to give teachers permanent contracts for the longer term, rather than their having non-recurring funding for additional support. That is fantastic—we all want that—but we want to ensure that young people who live with additional support needs get a fair and ample slice of the additional funding, be that in a mainstream or non-mainstream setting.

Rather than my asserting my view, convener, it is for the witnesses to say that we need to be clear about the money that is in the system and how it has been spent, and we need to be accountable for how it is spent and the political choices that are made.

That is at your discretion, convener, given the time constraints.

I am conscious of the time.

The witnesses have said that the hubs were well intentioned and they performed very well at times, but there were self-evident challenges that all three witnesses have put on the record. What was support like across local authorities and education services for young people who could not attend hubs—for example, if they had additional support needs but did not fit the criteria or if they had other barriers to accessing them? I am sure that there are examples of good practice and of not-so-good practice. It would be good to get on the record a sense of where things went well.

We were listening earlier to Linda O’Neill. Perhaps she would kick off on that, followed by the other two witnesses. We can then pass on to colleagues.

That is very helpful.

This is a really interesting session. I have been trying to join the dots between different bits of evidence. I was struck by the convener’s comments about the cuts in the numbers of ASN teachers and assistants in specialist settings and by what James Dornan said about the increased presumption of mainstreaming, which is the trend for young people to be in mainstream settings. I do not want to get into a debate about the sufficiency of funding—I hope that we will look at that during our budget scrutiny—but perhaps we could look at the baseline that Michael Marra talked about and at how funding is used.

Our committee papers say that, over two financial years, £450 million was earmarked for education recovery—not for ASN, but for education recovery in general—and that £240 million of that has been used to support staffing. Again, that is not specifically for ASN staffing, but for staffing more generally. More significantly, because non-recurring funds are welcome but they do not necessarily sustain the improvements that we want, I note that £145 million for staffing will be put into local government funds and baselined from April 2022. That is my understanding.

I am sorry for giving you those numbers but, going back to the baseline that Michael Marra talked about, do we have any idea yet how that money has been used across the 32 local authorities? How can we follow how the money is used? When investment is placed in mainstream education, how can we ensure that there is a commitment to additional support assistants? I see that the number of support assistants has gone up by a couple of thousand in the past few years. How can we ensure that they have the correct qualifications, that they are there for the long term and that they are committed to supporting mainstreaming, rather than again being in the specialist sector?

I am sorry for the length of the question, convener, but it is important that, as politicians, we do not just exchange numbers but drill down to see what they represent.

I will not explore that further because of time constraints, but it is important that you have put that on the record. Linda O’Neill, do you want to add anything?

Mr McGhee, if you chime with what we have heard, I think that the convener is keen to move on and bring in other MSPs. I apologise for not bringing you in, but I can tell that my convener is minded that that might be inappropriate.