Consultation on the Education Bill

Response to Consultation on the Education (Additional Support for Learning (Scotland)) Bill
 

This response is largely based on the commentary to the draft Bill provided on pp5-19 of the consultation document, as well as to the presentation and statements made by the Bill Team in their consultation exercise. This response is therefore mainly directed at the intentions of the Scottish Executive and not a commentary on how well the draft Bill would implement these intentions. For the sake of convenience, in this response “child”/”children” is used to refer to all pupils including those defined as “young people” in the draft Bill, likewise “parents” is used to describe all legal guardians or carers in a parental role.

Additional Support Needs

The SPTC welcomes the recognition of a broad group of children and young people as having additional support needs (ASN). The barriers to a pupil’s education may arise from life circumstances as well an intrinsic physical, intellectual or sensory impairment. However, although this approach is in line with the social justice agenda, the remedy proposed is almost entirely oriented towards the education authorities. It is unrealistic to expect education services to implement “joined-up” working without placing a statutory duty on other agencies to meet pupil needs, whether in terms of social work, housing, health, environment or other provision.

The SPTC is concerned that duties will be placed on education authorities (and by proxy on head teachers) to assess and meet the needs of pupils where they have no control over all inputs to a family’s situation.

The SPTC is concerned that this legislation will raise parents’ expectations of greater resources to meet needs of children with ASN (but no CSP) without a parallel increase in resources to local authorities or Health Boards (especially human resources such as Speech and Language Therapists, Classroom Assistants). If there is likely to be greater demand placed on pre-school services such as Home Visiting Teacher Services, Child and Family Centres, early intervention services and support within nurseries then again additional resources will be required.

We are concerned that that there should be proper provision to assess and meet the needs of children who are being educated at home and in independent schools.

Assessment and Intervention

• The SPTC notes that a great part of the system will depend on the content of regulations and guidance that have yet to be published.
• The SPTC is concerned that while the Bill aims to remedy variation in levels of assessment and service provision across Scotland there is little in the current draft to support standard practice.

Parent and Family Involvement and Support

• The SPTC welcomes the intention of the Scottish Executive to promote participation in the ASN process from children, young people and their parents and carers.
• The SPTC welcomes the introduction of a named contact person whose role it is to liase with parents on the ASN process. Where this duty falls on schools, which will be in the majority of cases, it must be matched by the resources required.
• The SPTC welcomes the right of parents to be accompanied by a supporter to meetings with the education authority. For many parents such meetings can be daunting, and the rigidity of the Named Person system undermined its value to parents whose circumstances and needs were likely to change throughout the school career of their children.

Mediation

The SPTC welcomes the introduction of the duty of education authorities to provide a mediation service. It is important that this acts independently of the authority and is seen as being independent of the authority, particularly by parents who may be in conflict with the authority.

Co-ordinated Support Plan (CSP)

The SPTC welcomes the replacement of the Records of Needs (RoN) system with the proposed Co-ordinated Support Plan (CSP) system, but recognises that there are “wrinkles” that need to be ironed out. Specific concerns are set out below.

• The population of children whose needs will require them to have a CSP is not identical with those who currently have a Record of Needs. The SPTC is concerned that the anxieties of parents of children with Records of Needs, but whose needs will not require a CSP, should be treated seriously by the SEED. What safeguards are there that the provision their children are offered will not be reduced?
• As currently set out in S2 of the Bill, the requirements on the education to authority to prepare and implement a CSP are triggered by the services that the child is receiving. However, these may not reflect the services that the child needs (e.g. where a waiting list for child and family mental health services has been closed, or where social work is unable to provide respite). Access to a CSP should be based on the child’s needs, rather than on what they are currently getting.
• Will support provided within school context eg speech and language therapy supplied through a Language Unit be regarded as education support and hence not lead to the opening of a CSP?
• Will children and young people themselves have a right to appeal against a CSP? Given the cost of legal representation, this is a recourse that families have available under the RoN legislation. There appears to be a conflict between the provisions of the draft Bill (S12(2(a))) and statements made by SEED officials in their presentation.
• The SPTC recognises that there are issues of confidentiality around access by many agencies to information held in the CSP. However “ownership” of the CSP appears to be vested solely in the education authority, which militates against multi-agency working.

Appeals and the Tribunal

The proposed ASN Tribunal only has jurisdiction over education authority. Given that the population it deals with, by definition, have input from other agencies, the SPTC believes this power is too narrow, unless education authorities are given powers to compel other agencies to meet a child’s needs

There are potential problems in the different definition of disability contained in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the draft Bill. The DDA now applies to education and has its own path of legal recourse – could school heads or others be placed in the difficult position where the two collide e.g. where parents don’t want a CSP but an education authority feels it is necessary? Or where parents use the vehicle of the DDA to obtain services they have not been able to obtain under the ASN Bill?

Placing Requests

Section 16 and Schedule 2 to the draft Bill give a large number of parents the right to make requests for placements for children with ASN. The SPTC has heard of representations from one local authority that this should be removed from the Bill on the ground (a) that the system for dealing with placements will be swamped and that (b) the cost of such placements would be detrimental to the rational allocation of resources within the education budget. The SPTC, recognise that the administration of a larger number of placement requests may be a burden on education authorities. However, we feel that, for those children who, by virtue of previously unassessed ASN, require a place at an independent special school, the right for their parents to make such a placing request is vital. The SPTC recognises that an assessment of ASN in itself does not entitle a child to a place at a popular local authority school.

Miscellaneous

S17 Other agencies to help education authorities.
While the SPTC welcomes the duty placed on other agencies such as health and Social Work to help identify and meet all types of ASN and to promote integrated provision, there is no guarantee that requests for help will be matched by resources. This is of particular concern where the services required may be provided by a voluntary agency e.g. respite or residential care.

28 Mar 2003