“I think that people underestimate our children,” says Ursula Scrimgeour, depute head for secondary education at Isobel Mair School in East Renfrewshire. “Everyone here will leave with national qualifications.” The biggest misconception about the special school sector, she says, is “that we don’t do what everyone else does”.

The school has 150 pupils from P1 to S6 with a wide range of additional support needs (ASN). Scrimgeour has been at Isobel Mair for 18 years, and the school has been around for nearly four decades, although only on its modern campus since 2011.

In the past 30 years, both the approach to special education and the attitudes of society that pupils encounter have changed dramatically - but Scrimgeour says there still remains a long way to go.

There has been a dramatic change in the sector since the early 1980s - when Isobel Mair herself, a paediatrician who is recalled by staff as a “force of nature” and “ahead of her time”, founded the school for 16 pupils. It was a time, only a few years after the landmark 1978 Warnock Report on special education, when children in the sector remained firmly out of sight and out of mind for most people.

A deathly hush was common in most special schools back then, says Scrimgeour, as there was a belief that these pupils should not be “overstimulated”. For the same reason, you were unlikely to find the swathes of colour in pupils’ artwork that adorned the walls of other schools: special schools often looked austere and institutional by comparison.

Containment, in myriad ways, was a prevailing strategy, from the common practice of pupils eating alone or in small groups in their classroom - protecting them from the clamour of a canteen, so the theory went - to the en-suite toilets that ensured that children did not have to venture far from the few people they were used to seeing in their classroom.

All that has changed. Walking through the corridors at Isobel Mair, you will see little to set it apart from a mainstream school. You might see colourful displays about space, pirates or farm animals. Arrive at lunchtime, and you will find the usual messy throng of pupils showing various degrees of enthusiasm for their school dinners.

Look a little more closely, however, and some things are different. The sinks in the toilets, for example, have several different types of tap: in the outside world, pupils will encounter countless different tap designs, so they are prepared for all eventualities here. In the corridors, you could easily miss the wooden rails that run along the walls, with an indentation that visually impaired pupils can slide their hands along. When those pupils reach a corner, they find a squidgy, tactile and brightly coloured light switch; push it, and one of several classic Disney songs - including Whistle While You Work and I Wanna Be Like You - will trill through the corridor to tell them exactly where they are in the building.

Much more than that has changed over the decades, however. When Mair, whose grandson is now a teacher here, started her tiny school, she wanted to challenge the prevailing idea that children with complex special needs were “uneducable” - a word that is as inelegant as it is loaded with false presumptions. Parents may have had high expectations for what their children could do, but they had long battled a system that gave their child no legislative right to a teacher; even in special schools, the role of staff was largely seen as a caring one rather than an educational one.

The path that such schools have travelled since then has been slow and winding, through changing national policy. The impact of inclusion legislation has been well documented over the past 15 years or so - but the ripple effect through the sector of the more recent Developing the Young Workforce (DYW) national policy is less well known.

DYW has been a “real game-changer”, says Scrimgeour. Springing from a 2014 report for the Scottish government by oil and gas tycoon Sir Ian Wood, DYW is largely seen as an attempt to attach the same importance to vocational education in mainstream schools as to “academic” qualifications. Scrimgeour wonders if the people behind DYW even realised the impact that it could have in special education.

“Even five or six years ago, if you asked our pupils, ‘What are you doing when you leave school?’, they’d just say, ‘I’m not leaving school,’ or some would say ‘college’. [But] they’re starting to look outward and onward in a way they maybe didn’t before,” she says.

This change in attitude was typified by one girl who earned a “blue riband” place on a college course offering skills designed to provide a bridge between Isobel Mair and other college courses. After being offered this prestigious place, Scrimgeour smilingly says, the girl remarked casually: “Yeah, I think I’ll just keep my options open.”

One boy insisted that he would not go to college, then changed his mind after he spent time in one and met students who shared his taste in music and films - after which, a little puzzled, he asked: “Is this college?”

“I think he just couldn’t picture what [college] was - college isn’t really in TV programmes or films like schools and universities are,” says Scrimgeour, explaining why tailored, early tasters of post-school education institutions and workplaces are crucial for Isobel Mair pupils.

Pre-DYW, says Scrimgeour, post-school options were “very limited”: school leavers might go to an adult resource centre, for example, where they might spend eight hours a day. Typically, it would be safe and secure, but with a conspicuous absence of educational targets to help a person move on. Now, students can target several pathways, from car mechanics to cookery.

The high hopes that Isobel Mair staff have for each pupil chime with the views of one of Scotland’s leading experts in inclusive education, Professor Lani Florian of the University of Edinburgh. She says that inclusive pedagogy views every learner as unique, and “difference as ordinary”; learning happens “through shared activity in social contexts”. And an emphasis on “special educational needs” is problematic, because it can “lower a teacher’s expectations about what it is possible for a student to achieve”.

Her research has found that, while there are inclusive schools where children are “happy, well supported and learning”, there are also examples where “children are not well supported, who are isolated and not flourishing in their learning”.

This echoes the mixed findings expressed in research published by the Scottish government in March this year, which appeared on the same day as new national guidance on inclusion.

Sally Cavers, head of inclusion at the charity Children in Scotland, says: “The evidence we hear from young people, families and practitioners continues to suggest that there is a gap between the well-intentioned policy-making on inclusion and the reality experienced on the ground.”

The right to additional support, she adds, is “not being consistently applied”, and mainstreaming is not working for many pupils - a situation blamed recently by the EIS teaching union on “unceasing budget cuts, decreasing numbers of support staff, scarce [mental health] and educational psychology services and limited professional learning for teachers”.

Florian says there are concerns about ASN in both mainstream and special schools, and she is worried about a growing consensus that mainstream schools are just not equipped to cope with so many ASN pupils. In January, the Scottish government announced a review of the presumption of mainstreaming after MSPs backed calls for reform.

“Type of school is not the issue - the issue is about the quality of the child’s education,” Florian says.

In any case, the idea that special schools should start taking more pupils from mainstream schools is a moot point because - and this is certainly true for Isobel Mair - they often have no space for more pupils.

Isobel Mair staff believe that much work must still be done to break down barriers that prevent their pupils from getting on in life. The Greenhouse Café company provides one helpful model: it operates cafés in a local doctor’s surgery, swimming pool and a theatre, and trains up young people with ASN to work in them. But applicants go through a stringent interview process - it’s “not just lip service”, says Scrimgeour.

An employer showing such a progressive approach remains the exception to the rule, however. While Isobel Mair staff say their pupils no longer encounter the same prejudices and cruelty as in the past, employers still have a fear of the unknown: they are wary of offering work opportunities because they do not know if they could provide the right support, and cite issues such as insurance and health and safety.

Headteacher Sarah Clark says staff spend a lot of time cajoling and badgering employers to see how their pupils could be an asset: “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the door’s ajar and we’re cranking it open.”

The school itself has changed its approach. Go back two decades or so and there was a big push to get pupils the old Access qualifications, driven by a feeling that they should aspire to more than simply acquiring a few life skills. Later, however, it seemed that things were tipping too far the other way.

“We’re really proud that we do science at National 1, 2 and 3, and things like history, but then we started to look at, well, where does that get them…if they don’t actually have the skills to do something with that?” says Scrimgeour. “We do those [qualifications] if pupils request it, because that’s the right thing to do, but we’re not focused purely on academics any more.”

Now, staff spend more time getting pupils to think about what they’d like to do in life. The school first identifies a pupil’s strengths and asks them about their aspirations, rather than presenting them with a limited menu of predetermined options. One boy, for example, loves to chat, and has signed up for a “shopping buddies” scheme, helping elderly people get their shopping in and having a cup of tea and a chinwag along the way.

“He’ll be a ray of sunshine in someone’s life,” says Scrimgeour. Without having tried something like this while at school, she adds, he would have flatly turned down such an opportunity after leaving school.

The school, once something of an educational island, now shares its practice with mainstream schools at in-service days, and the links between sectors are “much more fluid and open”. The misunderstandings about special education in other sectors, and the patronising phrases used to describe it, have largely melted away.

“It’s not, ‘That’s the wee special school’ - it’s not like that at all now,” says Clark.

The cross-pollination of sectors was visible the night before I visited the school, when, for the first time, Isobel Mair pupils took part in an annual dance competition for East Renfrewshire schools, including a group that uses wheelchairs. Under the collective name Wheels in Motion, they won the best newcomer award.

At any one time, around 100 volunteers from mainstream schools help out at the school, often forming long-lasting bonds: one boy who volunteered at the school over a decade ago has now - after earning a law degree and joining the Royal Navy - come back to the school as a teacher, where he sees the same sense of purpose and common endeavour that he experienced in the forces. (Plus, he adds, “it’s a lot of fun”.)

Isobel Mair pupils love sharing time and experiences with students from mainstream schools, but a couple of years ago staff wondered if they had over-stretched themselves: they wanted some pupils to try the Duke of Edinburgh’s (DofE) Award, including the overnight stays - for most, that means camping - that it demands.

However, when they went ahead with the idea, the reaction of one S6 boy - who is pre-verbal (the school prefers this term to “non-verbal”), uses a wheelchair and has cerebral palsy - reassured staff that they had made the right decision.

“He just had a beam on his face from the first minute to the end, and kept telling everybody, ‘I’m here! I’m here!’ He couldn’t believe it,” says Scrimgeour.

One boy with autism and learning difficulties, who had never been away from home overnight, tended to become defeatist in class, and staff were unsure how he would react to the DofE trip to the Isle of Arran.

“But he just got on with it, was stoic, had a good time, never once said, ‘I want to go home,’ or ‘I don’t want to be here’ - he was a team player,” says Scrimgeour. “You get to see a totally different side of the pupils, and that changes how you think about them back in school. I’m going to be a bit harder on him if he’s saying, ‘I don’t know where my jacket is,’ because I know he can pack up his own tent and sleeping bag.”

Isobel Mair pupils love sharing what they do - “Can you take a photo?” and “When are you putting it on Twitter?” are common refrains - and some take a deep interest in

life beyond school: one S5 boy, fed up with hearing about Brexit, wrote a letter to his MSP, the gist of which was, “The young people of today do not want to hear about this rubbish any more, so can you please tell us when this is going to come to an end so that we can get on with what’s important?”

But such gusto and confidence are often the culmination of years of work. One boy, who is pre-verbal, used to express his frustration by taking off his clothes and rolling on the floor. Later, thanks to a communication app on his iPhone - staff say advances in portable technology have been a huge help to pupils - his charm and wry humour came out as he was able to express himself by tapping out words that his device would then speak.

Another girl, who is autistic and has significant learning difficulties, went to mainstream primary school and arrived at Isobel Mair in S1 “very uncertain” of herself. At a recent banquet celebrating vocational education, however, the same girl, now a senior pupil, was one of the first to volunteer when East Renfrewshire education convener Paul O’Kane asked if any of the pupils - drawn from every local secondary - would like to make an impromptu speech. She spoke eloquently about her skills, choices and whom she would like to thank.

“Everyone afterwards said, ‘What’s she doing in your school?’ ‘Why’s she in your school?’” says Clark. “But she was able to do that because she is in our school - not in spite of it.”

Henry Hepburn is news editor for Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 3 May 2019 issue under the headline “Special delivery”