The EIS welcomed the publication of a report by Audit Scotland which highlights the scale of the Additional Support for Learning (ASL) challenge in schools across Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Report states that the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities must fundamentally rethink how they plan, fund and staff additional support for learning as part of core school education in Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ensuring an appropriate level of provision for young people with Additional Support Needs is one of the greatest concerns amongst Scotland\u2019s teachers <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Commenting, EIS General Secretary Andrea Bradley said, \u201cThe findings of this report dovetail with findings from past EIS research, which confirmed that ensuring an appropriate level of provision for young people with Additional Support Needs is one of the greatest concerns amongst Scotland\u2019s teachers and, also, one of the greatest challenges facing Scotland\u2019s schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms Bradley added, \u201cAs the Audit Scotland report correctly confirms, the current level of investment in ASL by the Scottish Government and local authorities is wholly inadequate to cope with the current, and growing, level and complexity of additional support needs in our schools. With four out of every ten pupils in our schools having an identified additional support need, the level of demand for ASL support has increased eight-fold over the past two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n far too many young people are simply not receiving the level of support that they both require and have the right to expect<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis huge increase in need has not been met with a similar increase in the resources provided to support ASL provision, with the result that far too many young people are simply not receiving the level of support that they both require and have the right to expect, despite the best efforts of teachers and support staff in our schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms Bradley continued, \u201cIn addition to the impact on young people, this rising demand is placing an ever-increasing workload burden on class teachers, who are expected to meet the wide range of needs of young people in their classes, but without the necessary level of resources and additional support to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDespite the growing level of need, the number of specialist teaching and support staff available across the country has declined significantly in recent years, largely as a result of a lack of investment. And class sizes in Scotland are amongst the largest in OECD countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Scottish Government and local authorities must grasp this particular nettle, and commit the necessary resources to fully implement the promise of inclusive education made to all children, young people and their families over twenty years ago\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms Bradley concluded, \u201cThe current EIS campaign Stand Up for Quality Education has enhancing ASL provision as one of its central themes, and we will continue to press both the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities on this issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf there is truly to be a meaningful commitment to get it right for every child and to eradicate the poverty-related achievement and attainment gap, then greatly enhancing the level of ASL support and provision in our schools is absolutely essential.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The EIS welcomed the publication of a report by Audit Scotland which highlights the scale of the Additional Support for Learning (ASL) challenge in schools across Scotland. The Report states that the Scottish Government and Scottish local authorities must fundamentally rethink how they plan, fund and staff additional support for learning as part of core […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2619"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2775,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2619\/revisions\/2775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/apr2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}