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A few days ago, a group of leading care and education charities warned that Scotland risks creating a “lost generation of vulnerable children”.
This intervention came after School Leaders Scotland (SLS), which represents secondary school staff like headteachers and deputes, released a report suggesting that the system as it stands is “not fit for purpose”.
Members said that the amount of support available to schools has fallen while the level of need amongst pupils (and their families) has massively increased. At the same time, it has become harder and harder to access specialist provision for those who really need it.
At the end of last year, The Herald ran a special series looking at the state of ASN in Scotland’s schools. We heard many of the same concerns and some truly heartbreaking stories. Since then teachers have continued to ring the alarm bell, and parents have continued to talk about desperate battles to protect their children.
Things are bad and getting worse – and vulnerable pupils are the ones ultimately paying the price in the shape of poorer (sometimes hellish) school experiences, education outcomes, post-school destinations, and life chances.
To be clear, the numbers we’re talking about are extraordinary.
In 2007, 5.3 percent of the national school roll was identified as requiring additional support; by 2024, that figure had jumped to 40.5 percent. This is the overall number, however, and it’s also possible to break it down further where we see that around a third of primary pupils, and nearly half of secondary pupils, have additional needs.
So in a standard high school class of 30, for example, an average of 13 or 14 will need additional support. That number will be even higher – perhaps dramatically so – in the most deprived areas.
Official data also lets us see the increases in specific reasons for additional support, some of which are astronomical. There has, for example, been a 100 percent increase in pupils with dyslexia since 2013, while the number of autistic pupils has risen by more than 200 percent.
In most cases these increases are probably explained by better identification and diagnosis, or simply by more detailed interest on the part of the school system: the number of pupils recognised as being a young carer, for example, looks like it has risen exponentially, but in the past these children simply weren’t seen or, worse, were ignored. Then again, the 600 percent increase in pupils needing support for mental health problems feels like it might be worth worrying about for different reasons.
Either way, the situation is pretty clear: as the level of need has skyrocketed, the level of support has remained entirely terrestrial. Spending per head is down considerably, specialist teachers are becoming an endangered species, and support staff are constantly being cut back.
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The thing you need to remember is that the overwhelming majority of additional support is provided in class by teachers, sometimes (if they’re lucky) with the support of extra staff. Very often this also involves a great deal of additional planning (referred to as differentiation) to try to ensure that learning and success are available to all. Oh, and don’t forget that teachers in Scotland still have less preparation time than those in almost any other comparable country, something the SNP promised, and failed, to tackle.
Long story short: we’re asking the impossible.
It doesn’t matter how good or dedicated a teacher is – you can’t ‘get it right for every child’ under these circumstances. The range and scale of needs are simply too complex; the time and support available are simply too limited.
The numbers just don’t add up, no matter what a government spin doctor tells you.
Something we don’t talk enough about is how corrosive all this is for teachers' own wellbeing. More and more, they’re being made to feel like they are failing their students, and trust me when I tell you that this is a heavy burden to carry around the classroom.
And it doesn’t even end there, because the failure to meet the needs of young people is also a major driver behind the serious issues with violence and aggression in the classroom – a point made over and over again by teaching unions.
All of which makes teaching harder and harder, which drives staff absences and shortages, which makes it harder to meet pupils’ needs, which ramps up the pressure even more, and on and on and on it goes.
As Audit Scotland correctly argued earlier this year, the Scottish Government “failed to plan for the impacts” of the more inclusive approach to ASN introduced in 2004, and now we’re facing the consequences of that failure.
Teachers were asked to do much, much more, but were not given the time, support, or resources they needed – and the powers that be either didn’t understand, or didn’t care, that this would lead to disaster.
The exact same mistake was made over the exact same period regarding Curriculum for Excellence.
The consequences for all of this are very real – in fact, the stakes are about as high as they get.
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We’re talking about the education – and by extension the life chances – of nearly 300,000 young people who need help. Those kids have done nothing wrong, but they’re being made the victims of a broken system and leaders who cannot or will not accept reality.
So far the SNP has offered a £29m ASN funding pot that won’t even touch the sides, while the opposition parties have given us slogans.
With an election around the corner, it’s time for all of them to be put on the spot and asked how, exactly, they are going to address Scotland’s ASN crisis.
