Education and Children's Services - Additional Support Needs Review

We Asked

Following extensive consultation with all school stakeholders as part of the Aberdeenshire Additional Supports Needs Review, recommendations were developed. We asked the public for their views on these recommendations. See Public Consultation summary paper for details of these recommendations.

You Said

133 people attended the consultation events. There was general support for a greater emphasis on all children being included in their mainstream schools. However, there was a strong view that the success of this would be dependent upon the proposed ringfenced Pupil Support Assistant time, and ongoing capacity building work.

There was clear feedback that there should be more consistency of good practice across schools, and that professional learning in meeting additional support needs should not be optional for school staff. A number of suggestions were put forward for additional professional learning topics for schools, and it was suggested that the views and experiences of parents could be incorporated into learning to a greater extent than is currently the case.

There was a request for greater transparency around how levels of need are defined and assessed, and suggested that leaflets should be developed to clearly explain the Enhanced Provision model.

We Will

In response to the key themes that emerged from the public consultation the paper taken to Education and Children’s Service Committee for approval included the following recommendations:

• Ringfenced PSA funding for the early primary stages, along with a new Enhanced Provision Outreach Worker post with a specific focus on supporting children with additional support needs in the early primary stages
• The CIRCLE framework to be rolled-out across Aberdeenshire schools on a mandatory basis
• Core professional learning to be embedded within a range of education posts in the future
• A framework to support the consideration of whether Complex Needs Provision may be suitable for a child or young person, and to aid in the fair allocation of these places by local ASN Forums to be developed
• The voices of children and young people and parents/carers with lived experience to continue to be incorporated into professional learning offers being developed