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The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

In 2021, we published a to assist in supporting children and young people’s mental health in schools. This complements earlier work to provide a to support school staff.

We also continue to support local authorities with £16 million a year to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services, which are now in place across Scotland. School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health, emotional and social needs of young people.

The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (the 2004 Act) applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

An additional support need may not be permanent and does not require a diagnosis. There is a wide spectrum of support that may be needed, from support to overcome barriers arising from health or disability to support for social and emotional reasons, therefore, each child or young person’s needs are unique.

Under the 2004 Act appropriate agencies have a duty to help an education authority discharge their duties unless the help asked for:

• Is incompatible with the agency's statutory or other duties; or
• unduly prejudices the agency in its discharge of its own functions.

For the purposes of the Act, an appropriate agency can be any NHS Board. Therefore, education authorities may make a request to an NHS Board, that a child or young person receives speech or language therapy or attends occupational therapy, where appropriate.

On counselling, local authorities provide six-monthly joint reports to the Scottish Government on both access to counsellors in secondary schools and children and young people’s community mental health services.

The most recently published information (3 November 2022) can be found at the following link:

The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (the 2004 Act) applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable. In addition, the information requested on current average waiting times is not held centrally.

To support children, young people and families, the Scottish Government has invested in a range of additional supports – including providing councils with an additional £30 million over the last two years to fund community mental health and wellbeing supports. Local authorities have reported that these supports have benefitted over 38,000 children, young people, parents and carers in the first six months of 2022 alone.

Record high investments in CAMHS, including £48.6 million of supplementary funding to health boards this year, are helping to improve the quality and delivery of mental health services to ensure all children and young people receive the right support, at the right time.

The 2021-22 Programme for Government included a commitment to invest £4 million until March 2024 to support public services to consistently uphold children's rights. The financial memorandum that accompanied the original UNCRC Bill set out how that would be spent and included commitments to invest in: accessible guidance and training; awareness-raising to support children and young people to be human rights defenders; a sustainable approach to the strategic participation of children and young people in decision-making; a social marketing campaign to raise the profile and support for children’s rights across Scottish society; and support for public services and senior leaders to progressively realise the rights of children.

While the social media campaign could not be progressed due to the delay to the UNCRC Bill, all of the other support is either in place or in development.

Our investment in supporting the implementation of a children’s human rights approach has been £4,117,974 in 2021-22, £5,022,545 in 2022-23 and is currently forecast to be £5,121,064 in 2023-24. This includes the cost of:

• work to progress the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill and develop supporting guidance;
• grant funding of organisations that are supporting public authorities to take a children’s human rights approach (Scottish Youth Parliament, Children’s Parliament, Together, Young Scot and the Improvement Service)
• grant funding of organisation that help children and young people to seek redress for rights issues (Clan Childlaw and Scottish Child Law Centre);
• grant funding of organisations delivering on children’s rights through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund
• national funding of Unicef’s Rights Respecting School Award;
• the development of a child-friendly complaints process in partnership with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman;
• the UNCRC innovation fund that is funding 8 local authorities and their partners to embed children’s rights; and
• the development of a national children’s rights skills and knowledge framework.

The Equalities, Inclusion and Additional Support for Learning budget was £26.8 million in each of 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 which equates to 0.65%, 0.63% and 0.65% of the wider Education and Skills portfolio budget.

This budget includes the Scottish Government’s investment of an additional £15 million per year since 2019-20 to help local authorities respond to the individual needs of children and young people. This investment has helped contribute to the highest recorded level of support staff in schools, 16,606 in 2022.

The Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of revenue funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on education, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The most recently available Local Government Financial Returns show that Additional Support for Learning accounted for a record high of £830 million of Gross Revenue Expenditure in 2021-22, equivalent to 12.1% of Gross Revenue Expenditure on education.

The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (the 2004 Act) applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

There are no national recommended standards or benchmarks for the caseload of school staff working with children and young people with additional support needs. School staffing decisions are the responsibility of individual local authorities. Therefore the information requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

All teachers are responsible for supporting pupils with additional support needs, not just those teachers whose role is specifically related to additional support for learning. The ratio of pupils to teachers has remained at its lowest since 2009.

We currently estimate the awards of around 160,000 people will be selected for ‘managed transfer’ to Adult Disability Payment.

The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (the 2004 Act) applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

Local authorities have duties under the 2004 Act to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. Local authorities are supported in fulfilling these duties under the 2004 Act through the on additional support for learning. Chapter 3 of the code covers identifying additional support needs and the assessment process.

As set out in published on 19 September 2023, there were 241,639 pupils recorded as having additional support needs in 2022.