This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.
Over the course of this week we’ve been running a special on additional support needs (ASN) in schools and asking if we really are ‘getting it right for every child’?
It’s the third special series from the education team, following an exploration of The State of Scotland’s Colleges in the spring, and a more recent examination of Fees, Funding and the Future for Scotland’s Universities. It has proven rather timely.
Not only have new figures shown that the total number of pupils with ASN has exceeded 40 percent for the first time, but the government also announced specific funding for additional needs in the recent budget speech.
We were told that there would be “a £29m ASN plan” that included training programmes for teachers, although it now looks like what’s really being proposed is a comparatively small increase in ring-fenced funding for councils: compared to 2022/23 spending levels, it is a boost of just three percent.
If you’re not quite sure what additional support needs means, I’ve written a short explainer on our website, but basically we’re talking about pupils who require a little bit of extra help in order to access the curriculum and achieve their potential. It includes autistic and dyslexic pupils, for example, but also encompasses young people for whom English is not their first language, those who are young carers, and children who have suffered a bereavement, plus quite a bit more.
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