KEY SUMMARY
• Additional Support for Learning in mainstream settings is woefully under-resourced and does not meet the needs of children and young people.
• Children and young people who receive additional support for learning in mainstream settings often experience bullying and feel excluded from peers.
• Families and Carers find it challenging to navigate the systems associated with additional support for learning. In some cases, it takes a significant toll on their mental health and wellbeing, and family relationships.
• Teachers need regular training on trauma and neurodiversity, and time to put their learning into practice.
• Alternative venues and greater opportunities for practical and vocational learning would benefit many children and young people with Additional Support Needs.
• Whole Family Support is vital to support families to navigate the education system, support children and young people to advocate for their needs, and provide a crucial link between home and education settings.
BACKGROUND
Includem supports children, young people, and families across Scotland to transform their lives. We do this through a strengths-based approach and rooted in building strong relationships.
This briefing has been collated to highlight the challenges that children and young people includem supports are experiencing in education settings.
Over the past few years, as our knowledge and understanding of Additional Support Needs (ASN) has developed, the provision of Additional Support for Learning (ASL) has been significantly threatened by reduced Local Authority budgets coupled with an increase in need.
As part of our Transforming Lives Whole Family Support campaign, we have made a commitment to the children, young people, and families we support that we will amplify their voices with decision-makers and campaign for change. This is particularly important in regard to education, which is fundamental in shaping children and young people’s social, emotional and educational development and can be critical to their life chances and outcomes.
The children and young people we work with come from the most marginalised backgrounds: poverty, poor mental health, housing challenges, and care experience compound the difficulties they face in education. Getting it right for children at this early stage in their life is crucial to ensure children and young people have the opportunity to reach positive destinations and reach their full potential.
For the past few years, the number of children and young people we work with who require additional support for learning has increased. Recognising the urgent need for change, and responding to the calls from children, young people, and families, our colleagues who deliver support have shared their knowledge and experience to inform this briefing.
We have made several recommendations as part of this briefing, both for National and Local Government and in advance of the Scottish Parliament Elections 2026, based on the experiences of children and young people. To discuss these further, please reach out to us at publicaffairs@includem.co.uk.
CONTEXT
The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004,1 as amended by the 2009 Act, legislates for the provision of additional support for learning in Scotland. The Act places a duty on education authorities to identify, provide for, and review the Additional Support Needs of children and young people for whose education they are ultimately responsible for.
Crucially, Additional Support Needs (ASN) are defined broadly, recognising that children and young people may require additional support for a range of reasons. This can include emotional, social, family or environmental factors.
In 2020, the ASL review2 led by includem’s former Chief Executive, Angela Morgan OBE, highlighted the systemic issues in implementation and resourcing. Since then, the Scottish Government and COSLA have accepted the recommendations of The Morgan review, committing to an Actional Plan for Additional Support for Learning (2021), which was updated in 2022.3 Despite this, progress reports note the continued resource pressures and the impact in which this is having on practice across the country.
WHAT ARE THE EXPERIENCES OF ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR LEARNING?
CHRONIC UNDER-RESOURCING AND DELAYED SUPPORT
• In Glasgow, we heard from our colleagues that there were only “five ASN staff for 700 pupils”. This imbalance of staffing makes it impossible to provide consistent, individualised support to those in need. This leads to teachers and support staff often having to prioritise crisis management over learning or relationship-building. Our previous report The Experiences of Children and Young People in Education Pre & During Covid-19 (2021) emphasised the importance of relationships in education settings, something children and young people continue to echo. The combination of increased need with dwindling resources creates a reactive rather than preventative environment.
• Across every local authority that includem provides support in, our teams reported that children and young people are waiting years for neurodiversity and mental health assessments or for clinical support. We heard about experiences of families in Glasgow who described waiting up to three years for a CAMHS appointment. These delays have a profound ripple effect through schools and the wider communities as children, young people and families are left to manage complex needs alongside schools, without the input and additional support that a formal diagnosis and associated support would provide.
1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2004/4/contents
2 https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/independent-report/2020/06/review-additional-support-learningimplementation/documents/support-learning-children-potential/support-learning-children-potential/govscot%3Adocument/support-learningchildren-potential.pdf
3 https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strategy-plan/2022/11/additional-support-learning-review-action-planupdate-november-2022/documents/additional-support-learning-review-action-plan-update-november-2022/additional-support-learning-reviewaction-plan-update-november-2022/govscot%3Adocument/additional-support-learning-review-action-plan-update-november-2022.pdf
• Teachers, pastoral staff, and support assistants are being asked to provide a level of therapeutic or clinical support that is far beyond their remit or training. The result is that schoolteachers and staff become the de facto providers of mental health and neurodevelopmental support without the resources, expertise, or time to do so. School Staff describe feeling helpless and underprepared, while children go without the specialist interventions necessary to make education accessible and meaningful to them.
• Overstretched pastoral and support staff are also similarly limited in the support they can provide. Maintaining communication between home, school, and external organisations is almost impossible given the significant numbers of children with Additional Support Needs. Regardless of their levels of training and understanding of additional support needs, teachers find themselves to stretched to balance the competing demands of education, care, and crisis management.
MISPLACED INCLUSION AND UNSAFE ENVIRONMENTS
• We often hear that children and young people should be educated in the “least restrictive environment,”4 which, in most cases, has been interpreted as mainstream schools being the default education setting. But this presumption only works if those schools are genuinely equipped and resourced to support every child’s unique needs. We heard that children and young people are expected to fit the school environment without adjustments being made to support their individual strengths and needs.
“Behavioural needs kids are bullying the autistic kids.” (includem worker)
“Classrooms aren’t a safe place for him — but he wants to be there.” (Parent)
The result is that children and young people experience challenging environments that diminish their social and educational opportunities, to the detriment of their confidence, development, and educational outcomes.
• Lack of trauma-informed practice, and a lack of resources mean that behaviour can be misinterpreted as defiance, not distress. Across all teams, staff observed that many schools still lack a trauma-informed approach to understanding children’s behaviour.
“A child with additional support needs was required by her teacher to write every toilet break on the classroom whiteboard in front of peers. This was justified as “monitoring,” but caused humiliation, anxiety, and distress.” (includem worker)
“Behaviour is children’s way of communicating.” (includem worker)
4 https://www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-presumption-provide-education-mainstream-setting/documents/
Teachers and support workers are often under immense pressure, with little time to interpret behaviour in context. As a result, signs of anxiety, sensory overload, or trauma are frequently misread as misbehaviour or refusal to engage.
FAMILIES CARRYING THE BURDEN
• Colleagues told us that families describe feeling dismissed when they raise legitimate concerns about their children’s wellbeing.
“He gets very stressed in large classes and the teachers always say he looks fine, they don’t listen when we say he masks at school and then lets it all out at home.”
(Grandparent)
• In our experience, some families find it more difficult to secure additional support for their child or young person due to the complexity of the system. Parents and Carers who are more confident in navigating the system and advocating for themselves may have completely different experiences to parents and carers facing multiple barriers. Because of this, it can feel to some families that access to help is based not on need but on advocacy skills and time.
“An 11-year-old refused school due to severe bullying. Her mother was showing early signs of dementia and could not fight the school’s position that the child ‘should simply attend’.
(includem worker)
• In addition, eligibility criteria and pathways for accessing specialist settings vary between local authorities, even between schools within the same area, leading to confusion and inconsistency. This leaves families navigating a complex, often opaque system. Even when the process is clearly articulated, for example by Glasgow City Council’s Placing Request and Local School Full Guidance, navigating the documentation and the required supporting evidence places a significant burden on parents and carers who can easily feel overwhelmed and perceive the system as adversarial rather than supportive.
“Psychologists are making big calls with minimal presence.”
(includem worker)
“To not have to constantly fight for support would make life less stressful.” (Parent)
Parents and carers report spending months chasing paperwork, attending endless meetings, and re-explaining their child’s situation to new staff as personnel change. Financial pressures mount as unpaid care, loss of income, and transport costs accumulate. Families describe feeling like they are “fighting a system designed to wear them down.”
LOSS OF DIGNITY AND POTENTIAL
• Our teams repeatedly emphasised that the lack of adequate support for learning means that children and young people are internalising feelings of being unwanted or incapable. Children and young people report feeling that their needs are ‘too much’, that they are ‘different’ and in some cases perceive that they will not succeed in an educational environment.
“The girl thinks she is not wanted.” (includem worker)
This sets a dangerous precedent for children and young people as they withdraw further from education and professionals tasked with supporting them to succeed. Once children and young people fall behind, the likelihood of catching up decreases sharply. Without consistent access to classrooms, structured learning, and peer interaction, skills and confidence erode quickly. The result is a cycle of low attainment and reduced self-worth that can shape a young person’s entire trajectory into adulthood.
• Long absences from school erode basic literacy, numeracy, and social skills. When children’s needs go unmet, their behaviour deteriorates, leading to further exclusion - either formal (through suspensions and part-time timetables) or informal (being told to stay home). Many of the children and young people we support have enormous potential: one young person with additional needs is receiving very high grades and was described as “wanting to study astrophysics,” but their school could not accommodate the support they required to stay in class. These are not failures of ability; they are failures of opportunity.
“A lot of children and young people not getting practical subjects and this is what they’re interested in and what would engage them, and where they would excel.” (includem worker)
THE VALUE OF WHOLE FAMILY SUPPORT
Includem provides whole family support meaning that even if a child or young person is referred to includem, we will support the entire family. Throughout this briefing, we have highlighted the impact of the lack of support not only on the child or young person, but the adults who are responsible for them and care for them. Whole Family Support is required in the current context of education to successfully support children and young people.
To do this, includem colleagues:
• Help parents and carers navigating the complex education system by supporting phone calls, writing letters, and using their expertise to liaise with partners across agencies.
• Support children and young people to better understand and express their needs. For example, supported children and young people who can now explain how overwhelming noise can shutdown their response to adults. Recognising behaviours like this is crucial for a trauma informed approach and for putting in place the right support to help them thrive in school.
• Acting as mediaries between families and schools to implement techniques and tools that support the child or young person to engage in education. For example, one worker told us about helping a young person to negotiate a discreet way of letting their teacher know when they were feeling anxious and their coping mechanism so they could remain in the classroom while self-regulating.
Third-sector organisations, as well as education colleagues, have highlighted the value that support that bridges home and school can bring to children, young people, and their families. While the resourcing and demand challenges in schools remain, there must be investment in holistic whole family support to ensure children and young people are able to attend, and engage in, education.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHANGE
• Local Authorities should invest in whole family support where children and young people are struggling to engage with education to support the family as well as the child or young person.
• Urgent investment should be made to support children and young people with additional support needs in mainstream education settings. Crucially, this investment should be made in teachers and teaching support staff who have the time and ability to build relationships with children and young people.
• Training for teachers and continuous professional development should include training on trauma-informed practice and how trauma impacts neurodiversity.
• We urge the Scottish Government to implement plans for extension of neurodiverse assessment pathways to give children, their families, and those involved in the child’s life greater clarity about their support needs.
• Families must be empowered to advocate for themselves and their child through the provision of accessible information and clear mechanisms through which to engage with education authorities about the needs of their child. This should include a dedicated point of contact for parents and carers looking for advice and support.
• There is an urgent need to improve transitions for children and young people in their journey through education.
• Teachers must be provided with the time and space to continuously update their learning and strategies for supporting children with additional support needs to ensure support that is offered is child-centred, rights-respecting and strengths-based. Access to training is not enough. The Scottish Government should consider legislating for dedicated time to learning and practice development.
• The Scottish Government should enhance the provision of vocational training and skills provision from the age of 14 to provide opportunities for children who are not engaged in the current model of education and whose needs will be better met this way.
• To match the evolving needs of children and young people in Scotland, additional provision of alternative venues for education should be a priority. Some children and young people require specific environments to be able to attend and engage, and this should not be limited to children and young people with the most complex needs but be a natural aspect of the process of enrolling children and young people in education and throughout their education journey.
REFERENCES
Additional Support for Learning Review Action Plan, 2022, available at www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strategy-plan/2022/11/ additional-support-learning-review-action-plan-update-november-2022/documents/additionalsupport-learning-review-action-plan-update-november-2022/additional-support-learning-reviewaction-plan-update-november-2022/govscot%3Adocument/additional-support-learning-reviewaction-plan-update-november-2022.pdf
Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, available at www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2004/4/contents
Presumption to Provide Education in a Mainstream Setting: Guidance, 2019, available at www.gov.scot/publications/guidance-presumption-provide-education-mainstream-setting/ documents/
Support for Learning: All our Children and All their Potential, 2020, available at www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/independent-report/2020/06/ review-additional-support-learning-implementation/documents/support-learning-childrenpotential/support-learning-children-potential/govscot%3Adocument/support-learning-childrenpotential.pdf
TRANSFORMING LIVES CAMPAIGN
Beyond the Budget, 2025, available at issuu.com/includem2000_/docs/beyond_the_budget_an_ includem_report?fr=xKAE9_zMzMw
Housing: Young People and Families Experiences, 2025, available at issuu.com/includem2000_/ docs/housing_young_people_and_families_experiences
You can find out more about the Transforming Lives campaign at includem.org/what-we-do/ transformingliveswfs
