There is a new trend to build “super schools” that are light, airy and open plan.
However, today, the MSPs carrying out an inquiry into additional support for learning heard that these new schools are having a detrimental impact on children with special educational needs.
Suzi Martin, external affairs manager for the National Autistic Society Scotland, said that “ensuring the school environment is inclusive” was crucial if autistic pupils were to flourish in mainstream schools.
But she added: “The trend towards super schools is potentially unhelpful and quite harmful depending on what those super schools look like.”
Irene Stove, a depute headteacher and member of the Scottish Guidance Association, agreed. She said the fashion was to build schools that are “large” and “airy” but argued that more attention should be paid to “the environment we are expecting children to learn in”.
Echoey and noisy schools
New school buildings could be echoey and noisy and that caused difficulties for pupils with hearing impairments, she said, but it also meant that if a child was not coping, all the children in the school were disrupted.
She added: “We’re seeing a lot of open schools, schools with large, airy buildings, that are quite similar maybe to hospitals or shopping malls. So you have a child who is dysregulated on the ground floor and it can impact on the learning across the whole school.”
Ms Stove also highlighted that if a child was “a runner” - that is, known to run off unexpectedly - not having doors on classrooms could be unsafe.
Deborah Best, director of DIFFERabled Scotland, said pupils with additional support needs (ASN) often struggled with “open-plan design” because of the “noise coming from other rooms”.
If a child did run off in an open-plan school, they could run through the whole school, she said.
“When you have lots of children with ASNs, no doors on classrooms is not ideal,” she added.
Consulting with families and teachers
The witnesses stressed the importance of consulting with families and teachers ahead of building new schools - as well as taking on board their feedback.
Ms Stove said: “I’ve been involved in consultations for new builds and it’s not always listened to and I know that’s the same for my colleagues.”
Ms Martin also said that “really simple things” could make a big difference to autistic children, such as providing high-backed chairs so they could feel “enclosed” and “private”, or a desk at the back of the class with some sensory toys.
She also suggested covering glass panels on classroom doors to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder concentrate if corridors were noisy and busy.
Escaping bustle of classroom
The witnesses spoke about the need for schools to have “breakout spaces”, such as nurture rooms, sensory rooms or quiet rooms, where children could go to calm down or escape the hustle and bustle of the classroom.
However, the panel also warned that these spaces had to be properly staffed and managed and that sometimes children with ASNs were spending too much time out of class, in rooms such as these, and were not accessing the curriculum.
The issue of part-time timetables was also raised. Ms Martin - who stressed that everyday families were having to fight for the right support for their children - said these could be “a supportive measure” but often were “a sticking plaster for lack of support” and could “actually be quite harmful”.
She said it could be difficult to get young people back in full-time education after previously attending part time.
Some pupils, she said, were “only receiving three hours’ education a week”.
The new Additional Support for Learning Inquiry was convened two decades on from the seminal 2004 ASL Act.
The committee is gathering views on: the presumption of a “mainstream education”, which aims to ensure that pupils “could be included alongside their peers”; the impact of Covid-19 on the availability of additional support; and what happens when people are in dispute with their local authority over services provided to a pupil.
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