The following article is an extract from the speech given by EIS President Allan Crosbie to the annual conference of the Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP) on 8 November 2024. The key theme of the conference was inclusive education.

The EIS Stand Up for Quality Education campaign is at a very important juncture, just as the UK budget indicates that Barnett consequential funding to Scotland will see an additional £3.4bn coming to the Scottish Parliament, providing a real-terms increase in funding for the Scottish Government to spend next year.

Too often in the past, whenever we have called for resourcing, especially the funding that is required to ensure inclusive education, the Scottish Government has dodged, deflected or dismissed those calls.

With this latest real-terms increase in money coming from the UK government, the Scottish Government’s Budget to be announced on 4 December must include a meaningful ringfenced increase in education funding to councils to deliver additional resources to schools so that we can address urgent challenges in respect of pupil behaviours, inadequate additional support needs (ASN) provision and excessive teacher workload.

We in the EIS share the AEP’s goals of genuine inclusion, early intervention and restorative, trauma-informed and relational approaches to behaviour. And we both understand the obvious fact that those things require proper investment, otherwise they cannot work properly and we cannot serve our young people properly.

There is a widespread recognition amongst education stakeholders that the gap between ASN policy and practice in our schools is now intolerable and central to our campaign is an urgent call for that gulf to be bridged; trade unions and organisations representing teachers, practitioners, support workers and parents issued a joint statement earlier this year, outlining our shared concern at the insufficient levels of funding to deliver ASN provision to the almost 40% of pupils who require it.

The joint statement concludes with:

The level and complexity of additional support needs are growing and will continue to grow, and meanwhile poverty continues to extend its crippling grip on families in Scotland

“We call on the Scottish Government and all education authorities to put in place the requisite additional staffing and resources to fully implement the relevant legal duties and commitments in practice for all pupils with additional support needs, and in so doing, improve the quality of education provision and wellbeing for those children and young people, and improve the working conditions, health, safety and wellbeing of the teachers and support staff who work with them.”

We had a joint meeting of the co-signatories of the statement recently, and we are looking at ways to further highlight the ASN issue and the need for additional resources.

Earlier in the year, we provided detailed written evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee of the Scottish Parliament on their Inquiry into Additional Support for Learning, highlighting the imperative for a long-term resourcing strategy, including action to reduce class sizes, and to significantly enhance the availability of specialist ASL support and expertise within schools, to meet the promise made to children, young people and their families in ASL legislation some twenty years ago.

The Convener of the EIS Education Committee, Susan Quinn, also provided oral evidence to the Committee and members of our ASN Network and Education Committee met with MSPs in an informal evidence session to provide first-hand testimonies of their experiences of supporting learners with ASN in a range of school settings.

The Education, Children and Young People Committee produced its report into the inquiry on 15 May, concluding that the current situation was ‘intolerable’. It was then debated in the Scottish Parliament on 25 September.

The recommendations in the inquiry report are being considered as part of the work of the ASL Project Board, which has been tasked to implement key aspects of the Morgan Review on ASL. The EIS is represented on this group and continues to use this forum to press for change. We will use the findings of the recent parliamentary report to amplify our calls.

The EIS has also arranged a parliamentary event on December 10th with a wide range of stakeholders in order to engage with all parliamentarians – including government MSPs – on ASN.

All of our work and all of our lobbying on the need for increased and sustained funding in this area was echoed, supported and reaffirmed in a whole host of research and consultations which the Scottish Government itself initiated as part of education reform, including the final report, All Learners in Scotland Matter, by Professors Alma Harris and Carol Campbell, emerging from the National Discussion on education a couple of years ago, and the Humanly Report, independent research commissioned by the Scottish Government and published in September 2023.

The level and complexity of additional support needs are growing and will continue to grow, and meanwhile poverty continues to extend its crippling grip on families in Scotland, with hunger, fuel and digital poverty now impacting more than one in three children in some areas.

The seeds of this crisis were sewn between 2009 and 2015 when the Scottish Government cut 7% from the education budget, which resulted in Councils slashing ASN services, including support provided by Educational Psychologists, by speech and language therapists, and by others such as EAL teachers. In primary schools during that time, posts with a general ASN role were cut by 70%, posts with a behaviour support role were cut by 70%, and learning support teacher posts were cut by 43%.

That climate of under-investment in Additional Support for Learning during a period of huge increase in pupils’ needs is now having an impact across the whole learning population: it’s harmful to the wellbeing of our children; it’s harmful to the wellbeing of teachers and school staff; and it’s harmful to the educational experience and outcomes within the whole system.

But the cuts keep coming – cities like Glasgow are set to cut 10% of the teacher workforce in the next two years, our Further Education College lecturers are seeing courses axed right across the country and nearly 20% of Scotland’s teachers are on precarious temporary contracts.

Despite an SNP manifesto pledge to recruit 3,500 additional teachers across the country by 2026, we have seen no movement to bring this to fruition and in fact teacher numbers have fallen across Scotland in each of the last two years.

We desperately need more teachers in our schools to support the best possible learning experience for all young people, including those with additional support needs.

We desperately need more teachers in our schools to support the best possible learning experience for all young people, including those with additional support needs. The evidence is clear and our call for sufficient, significant and immediate resourcing of ASN is completely justified and supported by all of the major recent reports and reviews.

We now need the Scottish Government to step up, to act, to invest, for the sake of the children and young people in our schools, for their families and for our teachers and school staff. Because, as all of us know all too well, everyone in the system is suffering cruel and unsustainable levels of mental ill-health.

Inclusive education, with wellbeing and human-centred relations at its heart, is precious, it is vital, it is urgent. But it cannot be fully delivered without thousands of additional permanent teachers employed in Scotland.