Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for the discussion on that theme. I will bring in Bill Kidd.

Certainly, much has moved on in terms of what schools are doing. As you said, cabinet secretary, they stepped up in the pandemic and are continuing to provide many of the services that were provided by health and social care partners in the past.

I will bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy.

Does Clair Henderson want to come in on that?

I am well aware of the avenue that Mr Macpherson was going down there, so I will leave that with him.

Thank you, cabinet secretary, for your helpful comment about your forthcoming ASL action plan update, which will perhaps co-ordinate with ours. That is helpful with regard to how we move forward our work plan.

To finish, we have a supplementary question from Willie Rennie.

Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2024. Our first item of business is consideration of the additional support for learning inquiry. This is the fourth formal session on the inquiry, which will consider how the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 has been implemented and how it is working in practice, 20 years on from being enacted.

We will hear from two panels of witnesses. We will focus on three themes throughout the inquiry: the implementation of the presumption of mainstreaming, the impact of Covid-19 on additional support for learning and the use of remedies as set out in the act. Today, we will focus mainly on the first and third themes, but I am sure that we will touch on the second theme as well.

On the first panel, I welcome Megan Farr, policy officer for the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland; David Mackay, head of policy, projects and participation for Children in Scotland; Marie Harrison, senior policy officer for My Rights, My Say, Children in Scotland; and Chloe Minto, senior solicitor from Govan Law Centre. Thank you for coming, and thank you for the written submissions that you provided ahead of the meeting.

I will move straight to questions from members.

The conversations will be extensive throughout the day, so I can assure you that some of the threads will be picked up later on.

We have spoken a little about the presumption of mainstreaming. In that context, I am trying to figure out, and I have some questions about the role of specialist school settings in our system. We heard from Matthew Cavanagh of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association that teachers in such settings have a real opportunity and a

“greater ability to meet the needs of individual pupils, whom they know better.”—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 21 February 2024; c 6.]

In your view, what role might those specialist settings play in the presumption of mainstreaming? What are the criteria for when a specialist setting is appropriate, and are those criteria understood and consistently applied? Perhaps Marie Harrison would like to come in first, as she caught my eye.

We will have questions about buildings later on, so I am straying into other areas.

I am trying to drill down into that to find out whether there are specific criteria. I know that it sounds a bit brutal to talk about our young people in that way, but what are the criteria for when a specialist setting is appropriate?

The conflict between corporate parent and employer is what Ruth Maguire’s question was about.