The Scottish government has rejected a recommendation that the additional support needs (ASN) tribunal process should be “open to everyone”, saying this could result in “unnecessary escalation of issues” and “duplication”.
The Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee - during its recent inquiry into additional support for learning (ASL) - heard about “a massive hole in terms of access to the right to remedy” for children with ASN and their families if they were not getting appropriate support in school.
Megan Farr, a policy officer for the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, said that only “a very small group” had access to the ASN tribunal because of the dearth of pupils with coordinated support plans (CSPs), the only statutory education plan.
The latest official figures show that just 0.5 per cent of pupils with ASN have a CSP.
Lack of access to ASN tribunals
The MSPs’ final report from the inquiry notes that “the criteria set out for qualifying for a CSP is creating a barrier to pupils and parents and carers being able to access the tribunal”.
It recommends that “all children and young people should have access to remedies, and that access to the [ASN] tribunal should be open to everyone”.
However, education secretary Jenny Gilruth has rejected this recommendation in her response to the report, which was published on the committee website last week.
Ms Gilruth said: “I have concerns that widening the first-tier tribunal’s ASN jurisdiction may result in unnecessary escalation of issues which could be otherwise resolved at a local level. It may also result in duplication of cases being considered by multiple mechanisms, resulting in confusing outcomes for the parties involved.”
She said she was “confident that work being undertaken through the ASL Action Plan to raise awareness of the existing mechanisms available to parents and families of children with [ASN] on resolving disagreements, as well as the refresh of the [ASL] code of practice, will go further in addressing the issues raised by the committee”.
Parents ‘having to fight for support’
In its final report, published in May, the committee says it had heard of “numerous cases” where parents and carers were having “to fight for their children to receive the support they needed”, and there was “strong evidence to suggest that the majority of ASN pupils are not having their needs met”.
In response to another of the committee’s recommendations, regarding improving ASN training during initial teacher education, Ms Gilruth said student teachers already explored “practice in areas such as ASN and inclusion”.
Student teachers were also given experience with ASN pupils in mainstream schools, but “generally not placed in special schools as it is considered too early in their learning journey”, the education secretary added.
On the training available to teachers at all stages of their career, Ms Gilruth said there was “a wide range” of professional learning opportunities.
Concerns over impact of ‘super schools’
Ms Gilruth committed to providing “further clarity that a diagnosis is not required in order to secure [ASL]” and set out a 10-step plan for addressing concerns that open-plan “super schools” could be bad for pupils with ASN.
The committee had heard that the fashion was to build schools that are “large” and “airy” - similar to hospitals or shopping centres - but that their size could have a negative impact on pupils with ASN.
There have long been concerns about the increasing number of children with ASN and decreasing numbers with a CSP.
Official figures in 2023 showed 36.7 per cent of pupils - 259,036 - with an ASN, but just 1,318 with a CSP. In 2013 around 130,000 pupils had an ASN, while over 3,000 had a CSP.
To get a CSP, pupils must require significant additional support relating to education and of a non-educational type - for example, social work or health.
In written evidence to the ASL inquiry, May Dunsmuir, the president of the ASN tribunal, called for the “very narrow and restrictive” criteria for CSPs to be relaxed.
She said: “It is not clear why children/young people who have support only of (for example) an educational type have no statutory protection for that support, no matter how significant the support needed is.”
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