Chamber and committees

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.

If young people are in school, it improves outcomes for them, which is important. We need to be mindful of the role of school. Visibly being present in school is an important factor, but there are some young people for whom attending school can be extraordinarily stressful, and there are a range of ways in which we can support that.

There has been a move to a level of online provision. For some young people, particularly harder-to-reach young people, that might work. I gave the example of the virtual headteachers network engaging with care-experienced young people to try to ensure that they are engaging with school education and attending school. Post-pandemic, that mixed-model approach is used—for example, by e-Sgoil, through the qualifications that it is able to deliver. Quite often in that delivery model, and certainly through NeLO, young people might be in school and experiencing digital learning, which I think would be the preference.

For some young people, coming into school is still extraordinarily challenging, but I have been in schools, including primary schools, where headteachers have used members of staff—perhaps a pupil support assistant or others in their school community—to engage directly with a young person and their family. Over a number of weeks and sometimes months, they have been able to encourage that person back into school. That is always to the benefit of the young person.

The member makes an interesting point. The difference between the two plans is important, because far greater need may be associated with the statutory plans than with those that are non-statutory. The challenge is how we can measure that difference and still give parents and young people the opportunity to have an individual plan. I do not know whether we have considered the issue in the past, as the 2021 review predates my time as cabinet secretary.

Pam Duncan-Glancy has made a number of points about workload and class sizes. If members want me to talk through all those things, I could be here until 12 o’clock.

Let us not pretend that every teacher in Scotland teaches a class of 33. That is absolutely not the case. If a teacher teaches a practical subject, for example, their class size will be capped at 20, I think. There are a variety of class sizes across Scotland.

I have been working with the teaching unions on workload because I recognise the challenge in that regard. However, workload is a monolithic term that we have to get into and understand. What are we referring to when we talk about workload? Incidentally, workload in Fife will look different from workload in Dundee, because local authorities ask teachers to do different things. Let us be pragmatic when we talk generically about things such as workload. I know that the teaching unions like to talk about those things but, to make a difference, we really need to understand what we mean.

One of the things that we removed from the workload was the outcome and assessment standards around qualifications. I think that Mr Swinney did that some years ago. We are now looking at reintroducing a level of continuous assessment, and I know that the teaching unions are supportive of that. The workload associated with that in respect of the new qualifications will need to be carefully judged, particularly for secondary teachers.

I will segue to Ms Duncan-Glancy’s substantive point, which was about mental health. We have a positive story to tell in relation to the counselling support that we have been able to provide in every secondary school in Scotland. That support, which used not to exist, is now embedded. That is important. It is not teachers who are delivering that support. We can learn from that model.

To go back to the original question, how do we embed substantive specialist provision where that is needed? I accept that it is needed, and I look forward to working with COSLA on that. To go back to Mr Kerr’s point, this is about having a joint approach because I, as the cabinet secretary, cannot direct COSLA. However, we need to take leadership at the national level. My setting out expectations of the use of specialists is helpful in giving some of that direction, but we can get change at the local level by working with COSLA, whether that is on behaviour, attendance or supporting additional support needs.

I thank Mr Rennie for that. First, I will respond to the absence stats and to that measure in particular. I have mentioned already that the persistent absence stats are quite shocking, and I invite the committee to really interrogate those stats, as I have, because they show not only that we have regional variation in attendance across the country but that we have a cohort of young people who do not attend for up to 20 days of the school year. Think about the impact that that has on their educational outcomes. I am really concerned about that measure. As a Government, we had not looked at that measure since 2014-15. Therefore, we added that measure in last year, to give us more data in order to look at the real substantive problem.

The Children’s Commissioner for England produced really helpful advice in a report on absence in England, which I think was published last year. It contained a number of recommendations. She also quantified the cost of missing school in terms of academic attainment and positive destinations for those young people. All of that is bound up in our wider ambition, and GIRFEC is part of that.

At the start of the evidence session, we talked about mainstreaming. I still believe in mainstreaming—I think that it is the right approach—but I hear the anger and I hear the challenge. I want to reassure Mr Rennie and the rest of the committee that one of the first things that I did when I was appointed as cabinet secretary was speak to the teaching profession, which said, “We’re not ready for these reports. We’re not ready for reform. We need to work with you and we want to work with you, but we need to respond to the challenge right now.” Therefore, I paused education reform for a year.

We will bring forward proposals in the coming weeks, but, every step of the way, whether it is in the reform of Education Scotland, the qualifications body or our qualifications, our children with additional support needs must be at the forefront. They are part of the whole system; they are not the add-on that they might have been in 2004, which I think is where we were when the legislation was first passed. They are part of our system. In some parts of Scotland, half of our pupils have an additional support need, so we must get it right for them.

Right now, I see and hear the challenge, and I make a commitment to the committee to work with its members and across Government, because this is not just about education. In a number of different areas, we need to leverage the power of other parts of Government, whether that be health or justice, for example, in order to respond to the post-Covid challenges.