They have brought us to an end-of statement and I am moving on to business from the Green Party. I will call Ross Greer to move motion 2809. I invite all members who wish to speak in this debate to press their request-to-speak buttons and I will call on Ross Greer to speak to and move the motion. Dr Greer, I am delighted to have the opportunity to move the motion in my name. Every young First Steven Yeehan arhere,  passo ti'n oeddur hyd yn alli gair, yn yr event economon un sylwedd i'r llyu i dda. Rydyn ni sydd wedi harwyl popir jy colorfulr o g Swinерж ac mae'r ein d Gaston Prifys Livingloo yn ei hunai am 很 go England, ond mae'n roedd eu das. Rydyn ni wedi arherwydd iawn i~? Arall, mae'n ne130 ynw beiklwydol oethaf o granddaughter gystio ac'n awna gweithio rhanol indicatecol viafa yn amlwys sphereon kritteideol, ni allwyddo yn insaneilol ruining o'r teimlo ei wneud o heddiwill ond gwahanol tydd, ac yn gynyddiad cy metabolism yon It is a good company to keep in international educational rankings. By other measures, Scottish education is not doing nearly as well as it should be. One of those is how we support our children and young people with additional support needs. In schools across the country, additional support for learning staff work exceptionally hard to ensure an inclusive environment for young people with additional support needs. That means supporting pupils with a range of additional needs, whether it is for those who have learned English as an additional language, those who have dyslexia, behavioural difficulties, or who are on the autistic spectrum. Children and young people with additional support needs are by no means a homogenous group. Individual support is important for every child, but with those with those support needs it is absolutely essential, and it requires dedicated, skilled staff to deliver it. The importance of teachers and assistants qualified to provide additional support cannot be underestimated. Today, there are just under 3,000 ASL teachers and a further 5,500 additional support needs assistants in Scotland. They are providing a vital service to over 150,000 pupils in our schools. That is over a fifth of all Scottish pupils who have an identified additional support need. For those who do not enjoy the mental arithmetic, that is about one dedicated teacher and two support staff for every 52 pupils with an identified additional support need. With the level of individual support that is required, as already mentioned, that is just not enough. It is less than where we were just a few years ago. In 2010, there were just under 3,400 ASL teachers. That is a drop of around 400 staff in just a few years. In that same period of time, the number of young people with an identified additional support need has gone up. Since 2013, we have identified an additional 22,000 young people in Scottish schools with an additional support need. I am grateful to Ross Greer for taking the intervention. He will know that the statistical collections were changed in 2010 and now capture a much broader range of what would be classed as additional support needs. For example, a child who may suffer a family bereavement during the course of an academic year, which requires a short period of support, would be captured within the figures where previously they would not have been. I absolutely take Mark McDonald's point. That is why it is essential. Now that we have found that there are such a large number of young people in our schools with additional support needs, and those young people had them before 2010, it was just a change in measurement, that it is absolutely unacceptable that, in that same period of time, we have lost hundreds of members of specialist support staff. As we know, those children and young people from deprived backgrounds are far more likely to have an additional support need. Demand for support has gone up and it comes on top of existing needs and educational barriers, but there has been a significant reduction in the staff there to give this essential support. Resources are already stretched in. With cuts to council budgets, the situation is likely to get worse. Since 2010, local authorities have endured year-on-year austerity measures, amounting to a near 7 per cent drop in their total real terms revenue. If the Government is to meet the targets, it is set for itself on closing the attainment gap, a new approach is quite urgently needed. As mentioned, those young people for whom the attainment gap is considerable. Only a third of pupils with additional support needs achieved one or more hires last year. That is compared to two-thirds of pupils without an additional support need. Although the level of attainment among young people with ASN is rising, which is something that we all welcome, it does not take away from the very unequal reality that those young people face. With additional support needs disproportionately affecting pupils from lower-income families and areas of deprivation, progress must be made as part of the wider effort to give every young person a fair start in life. However, the specific needs of individual young people with additional support needs cannot be lost in that wider debate. As it stands, we are concerned that that is not being given adequate regard. The cabinet secretary's delivery plan has one fairly cursory mention of the ASN saying that it will consider the impact of issues such as looked-after status, additional support needs and English as an additional language before quickly moving on. Without action, the Scottish Children's Services Coalition has warned of a lost generation of vulnerable children arising out of this combination of spending cuts, staffing cuts and a rise of pupils requiring support. Similar concerns over cuts have already been raised by the Association of Head Teachers and Deputies in Scotland, by the EIS, by parents and by young people themselves. Young people and their parents and carers are acutely aware of what is happening. Enable Scotland reported that more than seven in 10 pupils with a learning disability say that they do not get enough help and time from teachers. 94 per cent of their parents do not feel that the schools receive enough resources to work with them. It is teachers who engage with their pupils on a daily basis and who know how to provide the best support. I am sure that no-one in this debate is questioning the dedication and the effort of teaching and support staff, but what teachers need is the time and the resource that will allow them to give the individual assistance that pupils with additional support needs, which all pupils require. When class sizes become too large, when teachers' time is stretched too thin, when specialist ASN teachers or support staff have been cut, that assistance cannot be adequately provided. The Scottish Government must ensure that local authorities have the budgets that they need to ensure that those resources are available to our schools. The green manifesto for this year's election set out a desire to recognise the skills and experience of additional support for learning teachers and restore a career structure that allows teachers to stay in the classroom. In Finland, additional support for learning is a promoted post. That is something that I have raised with the cabinet secretary and that I would like to continue exploring with the Scottish Government, teachers and trade unions. Today, we are asking the Scottish Government to commit to bringing forward a budget that will allow councils to ensure more additional learning support teachers and support staff to be present in our schools, to reverse the cuts of recent years. It is worth mentioning that again. We are not trying to simply raise capacity to add to what was already there. What was there has been disappearing. Hundreds of staff have disappeared in recent years. We need to get back to where we were a few years ago before we can start improving on that point. We need to meet the increasing demand as more pupils are identified as requiring additional support. All of our young people deserve a quality education, centred around their needs. I hope that the Scottish Government will take on board the suggestions, not just coming from ourselves but from trade unions, educational experts, charities, parents, carers and, of course, young people themselves. Politicians often in speeches come away with entirely cliched quotes from the last time they were in a taxi, but I was in a taxi last night. Without raising it myself, the driver brought it up himself. I thought that it was too good that it had to be raised today. The taxi driver that I had last night has a contract with Glasgow City Council to take young people with additional support needs from one school to another. What he said to me—totally unprompted and did not know who I was—was that what he wants is for politicians to spend a day, to spend a week with the staff in those schools. He and his brief encounters with them once a day are so impressed by the dedication, the effort, the compassion that those teachers and support staff are giving and the additional support that they desperately need to provide every young person with the educational opportunities that they deserve. I call John Swinney to speak to and move amendment 2809.3 up to six minutes, please. I welcome the opportunity to take part in an important debate on the vital support for children and young people in our school system in Scotland. I begin with a point of agreement with Ross Greer that I do not enter this debate in any way questioning the commitment of teachers or other professionals who are supporting young people with additional support needs in our schools. I think that they have a very demanding job that requires enormous commitment. I spend a lot of my time, frankly, engaging with people on those questions and seeing the delivery of excellent practice in different educational settings in Scotland, in special schools, in mainstream schools, in every context. What unites that approach is the fundamental foundation of the Government's approach to education policy, which is our wider approach of getting it right for every child. Whatever the child's circumstances, in whatever setting, whatever their experience, background or circumstances, we accept our responsibility to do everything that we possibly can do to ensure that we turn getting it right for every child away from just being a slogan but into the experience that young people have of their education and wider support system within Scotland, particularly if they have individual needs that require to be addressed as part of the system. Ross Greer has made a number of remarks in the course of his contribution about the disproportionate cuts to local authorities' budgets, and I want to take a little bit of time to address that particular point. Audit Scotland, on behalf of the Accounts Commission, published its report into local authority spending this week and revealed that, far from being treated unfairly, reductions in real-terms funding of councils since 2010-11 are the same as the reduction in the Scottish Government's total budget over the same period. Also, we know that last year, rather than any cut in funding, spending on additional support for learning increased by £24 million to £579 million. Ross Greer, I thank the cabinet secretary for the intervention. Is he not aware that the figures that he has cited can only be brought about by excluding non-domestic rates—something that even Spice does not do when it produces the figures? When those figures are produced, it shows a disproportionate cut for our local authorities when the austerity from Westminster is passed on. John Swinney? The total analysis is the analysis of the Accounts Commission that I have cited, which is regularly cited to the Government as the touchstone of authority on those questions. I simply inform the debate about the conclusions of the Audit Scotland report, which demonstrates exactly the point that I have made. I am committed to ensuring that all children and young people receive the support that they need to support their learning in school, and there have been a number of developments to support that as part of the Government's agenda. We have established the attainment challenge, which is designed to close the attainment gap and to support children and young people who are affected by socioeconomic deprivation to secure improved educational outcomes, which will also bring with it new resources that will be applied to the delivery of school education. We have developed and published the national improvement framework, which is intended to drive both the excellence and equity in Scottish education. Through new and better information to support individuals' children's progress, which is at the heart of delivering the getting it right for every child agenda, we will be in a better position to identify where improvement is needed, and we will have a better understanding of children's needs to ensure that those can be supported effectively. The consultation on the Government's review is designed also to ensure that our schools are equipped with the approaches and the skills to ensure that they can best meet the needs of children as they present themselves in individual schools. The debate also touches on the presumption of mainstreaming, a principle that was established in law in 2000. That legislation offers children and young people with additional support needs the opportunity where it best suits their needs to learn in their communities and to sustain and build the friendships and the relationships that will last through their lives. The legislation also allows for exceptions to be made for children and young people whose needs may be best met through specialist provision. I have seen young people with additional support needs operating satisfactorily and well supported in mainstream education, but also in a special educational provision. The key point is that we must make judgments in our education system about how the needs of individual young people are met and to ensure that that is done appropriately. The Government also takes forward its responsibilities through the additional support for learning legislation, which was passed by Parliament in 2004. That act fundamentally changed the way in which young people and children are supported in schools. Moving away from a model of medical deficit to a legislative framework that focuses on barriers to children's and young people's learning in our school system, the additional support for learning legislation gives a fundamental base to the approach that the Government takes on all those questions. The Scottish Government is determined to ensure that we use the resources available to us wisely in partnership with our local authority partners to ensure that we meet the needs of young people with additional support needs. It is absolutely vital that every child, no matter their background or their circumstances, is effectively and well supported by the provision that we can make available. That provision will vary from setting to setting, but what is crucial is that we make the correct judgments about the assistance that young people require, that we meet their needs to the full, and that the Government is absolutely committed to taking forward an agenda based on that objective to ensure that we deliver equity and excellence for every child and young person in Scotland. I move the motion in my name. I call Liz Smith to speak to amendment 2809.1. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I move the amendment in my own name? In the current educational climate, it is probably not surprising that media attention is obviously on some of the other issues. It is all too easy to let the focus on additional support for learning take a backseat. Of course, that is just not the way it should be. We have great sympathy for many of the comments that were made in the Green Party's, not only in Ross Greer's speech, but in the motion, although we have a little bit of a problem with the last bit of that, because of the specific focus of budgeting, which I will come to a little bit later on. That said, there is absolutely no disagreement about the need to ensure that every child with ASN receives the appropriate help in the efficient and timely manner, and that support extends to the home and to the local community, as the cabinet secretary has rightly said. It is not just about what happens in schools. I think that that has been very much a feature of the additional support needs legislation, particularly the point that was the adaptation of that legislation in 2009. However, I notice that many of the comments that are made to people who work in this sector that there remains an issue about some of the data that is collected and just how clear that data is in measuring the efficacy of the policy. Notwithstanding that, the statistics that we have obviously speak for themselves and Ross Greer has outlined some of those. I think that they are right to make those points. That includes concerns that have been put to us about the number of educational psychologists, for example, because, as we have said before, the complexity of the definition of ASN is increasingly diverse—Mark McDonald alluded to that, too—and that definition puts an additional pressure on staffing. At this stage, it is important to ensure that those with the expertise have the appropriate access to ASN work. I will pick up a comment that was made back in the residential childcare qualification report of 2012, which was very supportive of the Scottish Government's desire to have a professional qualification throughout the profession—all very important indeed. However, there was a little bit of concern that the necessity of having a level 9 qualification for many of the staffing was just a bit too restrictive, and that was putting great pressures on some of the schools that have residential facilities, not just in terms of attracting the right members of staff to work in that profession, but also in terms of putting considerable stresses and strains on retraining and upskilling their existing staff and, of course, as a result of having to pay enhanced salaries. I have two of those smaller schools in our local area, which was a point that was made to us. We have to be mindful of that situation. I think that one of the other very important aspects of this debate is about the question of mainstreaming. The cabinet secretary is right when he alludes to the fact that that is a fundamental position of all parties within this Parliament, and I am right in saying that the OECD praised Scotland particularly for the inclusive approach to education, but sometimes mainstreaming is not the best answer for individual children. In fact, very much not the right answer. We have to be very careful that we do not have a system whereby mainstreaming is an accepted basis simply because we like the idea of mainstreaming. It is very important that we have to look at the educational values. I think that the cabinet secretary made that point himself, because that is hugely significant in providing the very specialist services for specialist needs, some of which are in the private sector, but some of them sometimes mean that a child has to go to another local authority rather than their own. That is a very important point. I will raise one issue that follows the event that some of us attended yesterday, which was the launch of the STEP programme, which is Kenny Logan's approach to ensuring that all children, no matter whether they have additional support needs or not, are involved in physical literacy exercises that help them to stimulate other aspects of literacy. The cabinet secretary has been very supportive of the STEP programme, and I think that we were very impressed by the compelling results that have gone with some of the pilot studies, particularly for those children who have additional support needs. There are many recommendations that have been put to us by those in the sector. It is very important that we see that in the context of the round whereby we are looking after the individual best interests of every child, but on top of that, the resources and the way that the attainment fund is developed, we have to ensure that that is carefully looked at, because I think that that could give long-term advantages to those who have additional support. I call Daniel Johnson up to five minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would like to thank the Greens for this motion this evening, because I think that it raises important issues. It is important because we need to be frank about the fundamentals of how education is being delivered in our schools. I would also like to thank Ross Greer for raising so consistently the issue of additional support since he came into this Parliament. It goes to the very heart of how we deliver education, because if we are serious about child-centred education, about getting it right for every child, then we need specialists and support staff in order to deliver it. If we wish to deliver the world-class education, there is simply no substitute for funding. I am sure that every member in every council area in this chamber has seen the impact of budget cuts to our local authorities in terms of lost janitors, lost librarians and lost music staff. We have heard the stories from teachers as they struggle to fund the basics, whether it is stopwatches for labs, textbooks for classrooms or even photocopying. That is why this debate is important. If we want to deliver for our children to build the society and the economy of the future, schools need staff and professionals to deliver their education, and it needs to be funded properly. The record of this SNP Government is that on both counts it has presided over decline. We have fewer staff in our schools and the impact of the budget cuts is all too visible in our schools. On additional support seats, we have seen rising numbers of children with additional support needs, as Ross Greer rightly pointed out. Since 2010, we have seen a 120 per cent rise. There are now over 150,000 children who need some sort of additional support to learn in schools. That is not bad news. I treat that as good news. The growth does not mean that we have twice as many people who have these issues and struggle to learn. It is a sign that we now know who these people are and what their needs are.  However, while we are better understanding additional support needs, the Government has not matched that with the additional resources that are required. Indeed, the opposite is true. Additional support needs staff are down by 8 per cent. We have lost almost 500 specialist teachers from our schools at a decline of 13 per cent. We are seeing those staff leave and retire and not replaced. The support and intervention is now often left to classroom assistants or added to teachers' existing workload. However, those cuts are not confined to those who support specific additional support needs. Over the past five years, we have seen a fall across support staff in our schools. We have seen lab assistants cut by half, technicians down by 20 per cent, librarians down by a quarter. In total, we have lost nearly 3,000 staff from our schools. The picture that is forming is one where we are simply not supporting education in the way that is required. Our schools do not just need teachers, they need a full complement of support staff and professionals to deliver education at the standard that our country needs and tailored to each child's requirements. It is no mystery as to why we have seen this decline. It is not about how schools are organised, managed or governed, it is because local authorities have seen half a billion pounds worth of cuts to their funding. If you cut from local government, that is what happens. Education accounts for 44 per cent of local government's spending, so cuts on this scale have a real, immediate and inevitable consequence on our schools. The Government's response to this, to reform governance of our schools, to blame bureaucracy, to launch more than a dozen consultations and reviews in education, but whether the Government centralises or decentralises, whether the Government creates new public bodies or scraps them, it will not add a single teacher to our schools and it will not add a single member of support staff. Over the last few weeks, the education committee has been examining written evidence from teachers. The picture is one of change fatigue. Endless changes to what they have to teach and how they have to teach. What they want is continuity and support, not more change. As one headteacher put it to me in my constituency, he does not want more control over his budget. He has responsibility for most of it anyway, as much as 80 per cent. What he wants is funding to employ enough janitors so that he does not have to unblock the lose at lunchtime when he does not have any janitorial cover. That is a political choice. The Government does not have to preside over falling staff levels. It does not have to cut support when we provide the children that we need it. Let us back that motion. Let us see the Scottish Parliament put forward a progressive budget based on progressive taxation to use the tax-raising powers to invest and protect our education in this country, not cut it. We now move on to the open speeches. We are already over time, so can I have speeches of less than four minutes, please, or it will have to come off the closing speeches? Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. My colleague Ross Greer began with a recognition of the dedication and talent of ASN teachers and support staff. I think that that is something that we can all recognise, but he also set out why we need to raise the revenue that is necessary so that we can support them better to do their jobs. The Scottish Government's approach, including its delivery plan, recognises that ASN is an issue that needs to be considered. However, if ministers are serious about closing the attainment gap—and I believe that they are—then that issue needs to move up the agenda significantly. That is the reason why the Greens have brought that motion. Children and young people, particularly from lower-income families and areas of deprivation, have disproportionately high additional support needs and cuts to local authorities where education is the biggest spend will not close that gap or create a more equal society. Children and young people with additional support needs are also significantly more likely to be excluded from school. Per 1,000 children, 69 with additional support needs were excluded in the most recent set of annual figures compared to 16 without. Just short of 9,700 children with additional needs were excluded from school in the latest figures, 2,000 more exclusions compared with 2010-11. Children and young people getting support for mental health problems are twice as likely to be excluded from school as those without. That is another link to demonstrate how ASN needs to be part of the closing the attainment gap agenda. The Roundtrip Foundation also tells us that children living in low-income households are nearly three times as likely to experience mental health problems than their more affluent peers. One in five children lives in poverty in Scotland. So many children experiencing poverty and mental health problems do not have access to sufficient or appropriate resources and support and are being excluded from school as a result is a shameful failure. Now, while overall patterns of attendance, qualification and lever destinations have been slowly improving, children with additional support needs continue to face those increasing levels of exclusion. The lack of ASN provision in schools can also result in the misidentification of a child's behaviour as simply disruptive, a misunderstanding of the causes of their behaviour and then a limited exploration of the possible positive ways to engage with that child in line with their particular needs. That can be the result. This is a complex process. The Greens are not here today to pretend that there is a simple or easy agenda to respond to, but that reality, that difficulty and complexity of that issue demonstrates why well-trained, well-resourced professionals equipped to identify educational objectives in line with a child or young person's additional needs, is absolutely vital. Giving those professionals the resources that they need to do their job. According to the NSWT, 92 per cent of teachers said that their school does not always get access to the external support to give pupil support where it is needed. That must be an overwhelming and bewildering experience for parents in particular. The assessment processes, accessing services, going through the child's eligibility, that in itself is a complex and emotionally draining experience, and ASN teachers and support staff are necessary to help them through the process, too. In closing, I know that Ross Greer and John Swinney have disagreed about the budgetary implications in the past, but let's remember the cuts to local authorities that are yet to come if Derek Mackay was right about the cuts that were anticipating to the Scottish budget. It's time for the revenue to be raised to meet the need that our children and young people so clearly have. James Darnan, followed by Tavish Scott. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I'll try not to take me four minutes up there. Don't try, Mr Darnan. Do it. You should not get any debate with me now. I'll never make it. My apologies. I was interested to hear Daniel Johnson's contribution. One of the comments that he made just at the end was, for me, crucial to this whole debate. He talked about political choice, and he's right. Where the Government puts their money is a political choice, and what they've done is they've made sure that the local authorities have not suffered any more than the Scottish Government has done. The Scottish Government don't cite teachers. The Scottish Government hasn't rid of the psychologists. It's local authorities that have done that. It's local authorities that make a political choice to not hire the teachers that are required. It's local authorities that decide to close down some schools for children with the assisted support needs. There's no point standing up. I have no point. I have no time to take interventions. They close down schools that are working well with some children with the assisted learning needs and then put them into mainstream. When some of those children have already left mainstream school because they weren't capable of it, those choices come not from here but from local authorities. The money that we suffer, a budget cut, that budget is then shared out among local authorities and among others. We have to be realistic about the money that we've got. However, the Scottish Government is spending a lot of money to try to help children with assisted support needs. In 2010, it started with its autism strategy, which has done a lot of good things since then, and there's still much more to do. We do not have an endless bucket of money that we can solve every problem with. We have to make decisions. We've made wise decisions. We've made decisions. We're spending an education. We've made sure that education is protected as much as it can. However, when it gets down to those local decisions, they are for local authorities to make. They are not for the Scottish Government to make. As the headteacher spoke to, he says that he's got 80 per cent of his budget, but he doesn't want that extra money. I find that very strange. I mean that it's just weird if he feels—so there's a headteacher out there that doesn't want to have control over extra money, which could be used then to support those children with assisted support needs. So he just—Bully, you could just— Could you stop having private conversations, please? My apologies, my apologies, Presiding Officer. The money has been given to local authorities. Local authorities have made their decisions about how to spend it, and don't get me wrong. Those are not easy decisions. Everybody's having to make difficult decisions. However, let's make sure that, if we're putting pressure on people to make decisions at that local level, they're putting it on at the local level where it should be. Ross Greer talked earlier about the impact of the Scottish Children's Services coalition's press release. He talked about the cuts in public services, meaning that Scotland faces a prospect of a lost generation of children and young people with additional support needs, making it extremely difficult for the Scottish Government to close the educational attainment gap. That was because of Philip Hammond's budget. That's what that was about. I asked the same question. If we're accepting that Philip Hammond's budget is making it hard for the local authorities to do it, how can we possibly—if we get less money, how can we be possible of putting out more money that we don't have? I accept your short of time at three and a half minutes, and I want to try to stay in your good books for the change, so I'm going to finish at that point. Tavish Scott, followed by Jeremy Balfour. Can I come between James Dornan and Daniel Johnson and speak through you, of course, Presiding Officer? If I could just gently say to Mr Dornan, but you do have choices, so every Government has choices, of course they do, because Mr Swinney, when he was the finance secretary—I know that you're agreeing with me, but I'm going to talk through the Presiding Officer, otherwise she'll shout at me as much as she'll shout at me—because Mr Swinney, when he was the finance secretary, of course, had the choice as to what extent of the changes—I'll use the word changes rather than cuts—the changes to local government finance would apply to local councils as to any other part of the public sector. So there's that choice, and I accept that's the choice that the Government of the Day has made, but there's also, of course, the choice about using the tax powers of the Parliament. Again, perfectly sensible and—or maybe not sensible at times—debate about whether you wish to use those powers and whether they impact on these families, or that families, or this income bracket, or that income bracket. But please don't let us not have a debate that says that we don't have choices, because we absolutely certainly do. I know that James Donnell is not making that point in absolute terms, but I think that it's important to recognise, as Ross Greer and the Greens have done in opening this debate today, that those choices do exist. I want to thank Ross Greer for the way in which she expressed his remarks earlier on. Because this debate this afternoon follows the finance secretary's earlier remarks about the autumn statement, in some ways, because, if Ross will forgive me, this is a money debate, then the best place to start is in the remarks that Derek Mackay made to Parliament half an hour or so ago. While I don't, of course, expect him to set out a budget—he's doing that in two weeks' time—what he did say in terms of commitments was in relation to education and to spend in education, he mentioned, quite specifically, to further expand early learning and childcare to 1,140 hours a year. That, I quite accept, is the Government's commitment that they have made in the recent election, and they are quite right to seek to deliver that. Believe me, I come from a place in politics where it's a good idea not to say things or rather to deliver things you say you are going to deliver as opposed to not to. The important point there, perhaps, is not just in terms of Mr Johnson's remarks to reflect on what has happened, but the challenge for Derek Mackay and for his Government in two weeks' time is to take on what Ross Greer said in his opening remarks. Here are some clear statistics that illustrate the demand for additional support needs. Mark McDonald made a perfectly fair remark about the widening aspect of how we now judge that and how we deal with that in schools. That's perfectly true and therefore needs to be taken into account. Given that, what I suppose many of us across this chamber who do care, as I suspect people in all political sides do, is how the budget will respond to that. That is going to be the test of any Government. It will be the test of Mr Mackay as the new finance secretary when he outlines that budget. I suspect that, in the context of today's debate, what Ross Greer and the Greens are rightly saying to Parliament is that they believe that this is going to be an important area to make sure that there is spend in this area, which reflects that rising demand that Daniel Johnson, Ross Greer and Indeed and Fairness Elizabeth mentioned as well. We may come from different places as to how we pay for that, but I think that it's important to recognise that. One other point, if I may, to get me in under time, is that I would urge in that consideration, because I think that it goes to the route of the remarks that Ross Greer was making in terms of how local government plans for this over the future, is, as John Swinney will, I hope, concede. As the Accounts Commission made clear in its report to Parliament this week, the Scottish Government has provided councils with one-year funding settlements in 15, 16 and 16, 17. For those of us who remember the Halcyon years of three-year funding settlements, it wouldn't half be helpful if we went back to that. I would encourage Mr Swinney and his ministerial colleagues to do exactly that. Jeremy Balfour, followed by Monica Lennon. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I declare an interest as a councillor here at Edinburgh City Council. I think that all parties, as has already been said, want the best interest for every child and want the right support there for every child. As we have already heard, the number of children with additional support needs has increased over the past few years. I actually think that that is good news rather than bad news. We have better diagnosis, we have better recording, but, out of that, we also have to recognise that each child is individual. If I can start where I left my question with the minister yesterday to say that I agree that this Government believes that the best interest of each child needs to be met. However, I am not convinced yet that that has worked through to each local authority and to each officer within local authority. Too often children will be labelled with a label. If you have a certain condition, that is what the extra support needs you need. Rather than saying that each child is different and should be assessed in what need he or she requires, it is vital that the need of the child is put first rather than any cost implication. When we are looking at additional support needs, we often and rightly focus on the classroom and on what happens in that learning experience. However, for certain children, what happens at lunchtime or at break time is as important if not more important than what happens in the classroom. Social isolation can be devastating for a child, whether through disability, physical or mental, or for some other reason that they need additional support needs. That must be carried through not only at the classroom but to ensure that each child is included in all the activities of the school and is not bullied when the teacher's back is turned. My colleague Liz Smith has turned and spoken about mainstreaming, but there has been a 25 per cent drop of special needs schools in the past seven years. That leads me to some concerns that, where it is appropriate—in most cases, it will not be—is there a school for that child to go to? I think that we need to look at the provision of special needs schools across the whole of our country. That is not an issue for Edinburgh or Glasgow or Highlands or wherever. It is an issue for the whole of our country. I think that we need to make sure that parents and professionals and the child are consulted, but where it is appropriate that that local authority does have the resource, either in its own area or in another area of Scotland, to make sure that that place is there. Finally, I turn to one other issue. That is what happens once a child leads the school, because the additional support needs are only working if that outcome is successful. That is where I think that the biggest concern must be faced by all of us. The number of modern apprenticeships started in 2014-15 by self-declared disabled individuals was 0.41 per cent. If you look at those in employment between 18 and 24, that figure is 8.6. Even that figure is too low compared to the number of disabled people in Scotland. I ask the minister and his team to look at why people are failing when they leave school to get into their apprenticeships and what extra support needs do they need, not just at school, but as they go on to college, university, apprenticeships or some other form of employment. I warmly welcome the motion from Ross Greer and the acknowledgement of the importance of additional support for learning in Scotland's classrooms. I also declare an interest as a local councillor in South Lanarkshire. There is no doubt that additional support for learning teachers and support staff are absolutely vital to the successful development of children with additional support needs. Without that targeted support for those who need it, successful outcomes for children with additional support needs become much harder to achieve and the extra pressure on teachers has an all-quant effect for the development of all children in the classroom. Making sure that we have adequate support for pupils with ASN is crucial not only to their individual development but also to closing the attainment gap. However, we have heard today repeatedly that resources are not keeping up with the needs of children and young people with additional support needs. I hope that this debate will persuade any member or minister who has been in need of persuasion that that simply is the case. We have heard from the official figures that we have for 2015 that over one in five children were registered as having additional support needs—a big increase of 16 per cent, as Ross Greer and Daniel Johnson have said. That is a positive that we have improved information about the individual needs of our children and young people, whether it is a short-term issue or a longer-term additional support needs. Despite that better information, there has been no increase in numbers of support staff able to support children with additional learning requirements. In fact, as we have heard, the number of dedicated learning support and additional support needs teachers has significantly declined by 13 per cent over the past five years. It is now at the lowest number that is on record. Over the past five years, in primary, secondary, special schools and centralised provision, overall support staff is down by more than 1500, a decrease of 7 per cent. That worrying trend coupled with the fact that the numbers of children with additional learning requirements are on the increase is what led the Scottish Children's Services Coalition to release the joint statement that it made this week, warning that we face a lost generation—a statement that it has not made lightly of children and young people with additional support needs—unless we reverse the cuts to public service and make further investments in education. I would say that it is to the credit of Ross Greer and the Scottish Greens that they have used their parliamentary business time today to allow the fears of the Scottish Children's Services Coalition and parents to be heard. Yesterday, during topical questions, I raised the issue with the Minister for Children and Early Years, Mark McDonald. I was disappointed that he was unable to rule out further cuts to local authority budgets in order to protect the most vulnerable pupils. The minister stated in a figure that has been repeated today that ASN spending across Scotland increased by £24 million in 2015, but that is an increase of just 1 per cent on the year before. Of course, any additional funding for education and pupils with ASN is welcome, but the fact remains that we can and we must do more. Despite attempts to portray local government funding as rosy, the report from the Accounts Commission yesterday shows that councils will be facing a predicted budget black hole of £553 million by 2018-19. When the third sector, parents and ASN staff are telling us that children with ASN are at risk of becoming a lost generation, it is simply not good enough for the Scottish Government to look away or use Philip Hammond's explanation for all that. Professionals, parents and organisations across the children's sector are telling us that they need more than what is currently being offered. The Scottish Children's Services Coalition has made it abundantly clear that we must stop cuts to the public sector and increase investment in services to protect the most vulnerable. That is why I am happy to finish and fully support Ross Greer's motion today. The last of the open speeches is Fulton MacGregor. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and I would firstly like to thank you and the Green Party for bringing it to the chamber and giving me the absolute honour of being able to stand here in our Parliament on St Andrew's Day as a privilege. As others have said, there can be no doubt that the Scottish budget faces major challenges as a result of the cruel cuts from Westminster. We heard a bit more of that as others have said in Derek Mackay's earlier speech regarding the autumn statement. As a credit to the Scottish Government, the areas such as additional support for learning have been protected as much as possible. Clearly, there are challenges in maintaining and improving the additional support needs provisions in our schools. However, I do believe that it is disingenuous for our opposition parties to suggest that challenges are the result of budget decisions by the Scottish Government. For example, as others have mentioned, the Scottish Children's Services Coalition notes that there is an increased demand for additional support in our schools as a result of broad and legal definition of additional support needs as well as an increased identification of those needing assessment and intervention. As Jeremy Balfour noted, that can only be a good thing. My personal value-based experience leans me towards supporting inclusion wherever possible. I think that when a child is supported with his or her peers, that is in the best interest of everyone. I do believe that the Scottish Government has made good progress in that area. I have seen that in my own work before becoming an MSP over the period of time. As others have said, inclusion includes a wide range of individuals. To name just a few, it can include individuals who have been bullied, have behavioural learning difficulties, are suffering a bereavement or are looked after by the local authority. I know that the chamber has spent considerable time looking at that particular issue. That brings me to my next point. There are massive discrepancies between local authorities in terms of who they define as ASN, with North Lanarkshire Council in my own area being as low as 8 per cent, compared with that being around 20 per cent in some other local authority areas. That fits in exactly with what constituents are telling me when they are coming to surgeries or my office to meet me. A lot of parents are coming to me desperate, feeling not listened to by the council, feeling that the child is not getting the support they need. I have even had a couple of cases recently where parents have taken steps to remove their child from the education setup in a bid to try and get the council to take some action. Those parents are under absolutely no illusion. They are not coming to me as an SNP MSP blaming the Government. They are saying that the council is not listening to them. I would go back exactly to James Dornan's point and say that, while we have all got a role to play in this, we need to look at where the actual decisions are being made. James Dornan also mentioned North Lanarkshire's one-stop shop. That is an absolutely fantastic service. Before its funding was cut by the Labour council, it is a service that covered my area, as well as all of North Lanarkshire, and it had fantastic results. As I said, I cannot. Four minutes and nearly finished. It has consistently got positive results. I have to mention my ex-colleague, Councillor Rosa Zambanini, with many parents who led up a protest against disclosure, but unfortunately the local Labour Party would not listen. That said, I need to say that there is hope for autism. Organisations who I met at the caring for carers event at the Coatbridge college campus have been absolutely fantastic in stepping into the breach. I believe that we must focus on the future of the recent decision of the Parliament to increase the rates of council tax in the four highest bands. It means that more funding will be available to schools throughout Scotland, and I expect that that will lead to more money being spent on additional support needs in schools. It would seem that, on today, St Andrew's day, the Westminster Government had no intention of reversing the cuts. For me, there is no doubt that, until such a time this Parliament makes all of our own decisions about our own priorities, there is more strain to come for those who are most in need. I welcome the commitment of this Government to... I have to close Mr McGregor. Closing speeches. Ian Gray, absolutely no more than four minutes please, Mr Gray. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I wanted to start with a point of... I think underline agreement in the debate, but one that was examined to a degree by Liz Smith and Jeremy Balfour, and that is the presumption for mainstreaming. I think it is the case that, across the chamber, we do agree that those who have additional support needs should have their educational needs met in the mainstream. It is worth noting that it is not so long ago that that was not the case, and that is a change. Indeed, if I am honest, my mind has changed a bit on this over the years. When I was younger, I was probably much more hardline and believed that absolutely everyone should be in the mainstream, and I think that I am soft and my view a bit. Nonetheless, Ross Greer made mention of the fact that 95 per cent of pupils are in the mainstream, and that is considered outstandingly inclusive internationally, and I think that that is something that we can be very proud of. However, we have to understand that the promise of mainstreaming only works if it is matched by the promise of the support that is needed in order to allow the young person to achieve all that they can in that setting. I know that, from my own experience, way back in the 80s, when I taught at Gracemount High School in this city, on that campus was also Cambridge School, which at the time was the school for the partially sighted, and pupils from Cambridge would spend some of their time in mainstream classes—my class, my science class—and it worked incredibly well. It worked well because my class size was kept smaller to allow it to happen and because it came with specialist support staff as well who were able to assist them. However, what happened over the years was that that additional support disappeared. Class sizes went back to their maximum and the additional support teachers disappeared. I knew then that the service that was being provided to those young people was simply letting them down. I could not do it, so the service only works when we do not allow it to be squeezed by cuts. My fear is that we are in a similar position today. Both the cabinet secretary and the minister understand the challenges that are faced by additional support needs children and are absolutely sincere, of course, in their desire to serve them well. However, I think that there has been a degree of denial. All of us who have constituents will have constituents who will have told us that support for SNP pupils is shrinking and that pupils who perhaps had support for the whole week a couple of years ago now will only have it for half the week or who had a support worker to themselves. We will now be sharing that support worker with somebody else or perhaps even to other pupils. We heard on the media yesterday people saying that that was what was happening to their children. The Children's Services Coalition tells us that it is happening, so I do not think that we can deny that. I say to Mr MacGregor that it is not this side of the chamber that has been disingenuous. There is a certain amount of being disingenuous around that additional £24 million that Monica Lennon said. That is one per cent. That is her real terms cut. There are real cuts in additional support teachers, additional support workers. It does not matter which kind of support worker we look at, we actually see that their numbers have been reduced. That is the real consequence of the cuts to local government. We can argue about whether local government have had their fair share of cuts or more than their fair share of cuts till the cows have come home. The important thing is that I say to Mr Dornan in particular that, as of today, this is our choice. We do not have to accept Philip Hammond's budget. Mr Dornan and his colleagues need to learn to feel the freedom, make their own choices, raise their resources and support our children in their schools. I call on Ross Thomson. The less than four minutes please, Mr Thomson. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I would like to declare an interest as a servant councillor on Aberdeen City Council. Across this chamber, we have the ambition to ensure that absolutely every child, regardless of whom they are, where they are from or their circumstances, should be able to reach their full potential. We are aware that the responsibility for delivering positive outcomes for our vulnerable young people falls on the shoulders of our councils. Given the increasingly challenging financial situation that our councils are facing, we have seen councils spending on in-school support for pupils fall by 11 per cent since 2012, and funding for charities outside school has also fallen. That is despite, in all local authority areas, the exception of Shetland and South Ayrshire. The percentage of children with additional support is increasing. That gives me an opportunity to talk about the work in my area and talk about Aberdeen City Council, which has carried out a full review of inclusion, which concluded its work in August 2014. The recommendations of that review are being implemented and some great progress is being made. The review highlighted that many children were needlessly travelling long distances to access appropriate support for their needs and that there was a lack of support in mainstream schools. Following approval of the reviews and the recommendations, the council made a number of changes to help local schools to identify what interventions could be made to meet the needs of a wide range of young people and to ensure that additional resources that were required were in place to meet those needs within a mainstream setting. Since 2014, the number of children with additional support needs that now attend their local schools with their peers and siblings has significantly increased. The touch on the point that was made by my colleague Liz Smith about mainstreaming but also the important role of parents is that we have actually seen Aberdeen that, as parents and carers have become more confident that individual needs will be met in their local school, there has also been a reduction in placing requests. Furthermore, the number of children being transported to a school outwith their local area has reduced and continues to fall. The point that was raised by my colleague Jeremy Balfour in relation to not having a particular school to go to and the place that Aberdeen City Council constructs a new 17 million centre of excellence for children with additional support needs. The centre of excellence is the first of its kind. It will be a hub for best practice in supporting learners with additional support needs, providing a hub for outreach services such as speech and language, a new resource centre for training facilities and a community hub for families and charities to access. In conclusion, as my colleagues have articulated in the debate, those of us on this side of the chamber welcome the increase in funding for the Scottish Government's attainment fund. However, rather than being assigned to a particular school, we believe that it should follow the child, particularly those with additional support needs. We also believe that the money should be allocated on an individual basis to be tailored to the needs of children with additional support needs. Some great progress is being made, but there is still work to be done, which is why we need to continue to work in partnership with agencies such as the NHS in the third sector, parents and the young people themselves, to deliver a holistic service that truly meets the needs of young people of children with complex additional support needs and ensure that that is delivered. Colin McDonald, absolutely no more than five minutes please, minister. Okay, thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and we will try to get through this as best as possible, because there are a number of points that have been raised. I want to begin by thanking Ross Greer and the Greens for bringing this debate to Parliament today. Obviously, we have seen in the media this week the comments regarding the Scottish Children's Services Coalition, which I have met previously and said yesterday at topical questions that I am happy to carry on engagement with them. They have both identified the challenge but also identified opportunities in driving greater collaboration. I think that that is something that all parties in the chamber have signed up to in terms of the public sector reform and Christie agenda. I think that it is important that we examine how best we can take that forward. Let us look at some of the points that have been raised by speakers in the debate today. Liz Smith and a number of members highlighted the issue around the presumption of mainstreaming. While absolutely we want to ensure that children are educated in their local community, where that is possible to be done, it is worth noting that there are within the legislation three clear exceptions where it does not meet the need of the child, where it negatively affects the learning of other children or where there is disproportionate cost around mainstream provision. We are revising and reviewing the guidance around presumption of mainstreaming, and that will be undertaken during the course of 2017. The debate got into a sphere where speeches from Daniel Johnson, James Dorn and Monica Lennon spoke about the concept of political choices, and they are quite right to talk about political choices. The Government made a very clear political choice to put in place £88 million, which was specifically to protect teacher numbers, because what we saw, as Mr Dornan identified, was that unencumbered by that requirement, local authorities, in particular Glasgow, were reducing teacher numbers—4,000 teachers in Glasgow. That was not a decision that the Government took, it was a decision that local authorities took. Just on the point of political choices, Monica Lennon and her colleagues on the Labour Ventures are quite entitled to stand up and ask for additional resource. They then, when they are told that additional resource has been provided and increased, complained that it has not gone up by enough. They also have the opportunity now at local authority level. They spent the last almost decade telling us that they should remove the council tax freeze. We have done that. We have enabled local authorities to make the political choice to increase the council tax if they feel that that would be a means by which they could increase the resources that are available to them. Monica Lennon should know that her own local authority in South Lanarkshire has announced that they have no intentions in the coming budget to increase the council tax. That is a political decision that they have made not to increase their revenues by increasing the council tax. I put that into context for the chamber when we are talking about the political choices that exist. Patrick Harvie touched on the point about exclusions. I would say that we are absolutely clear that exclusion should always be a last resort. We will be bringing out refreshed guidance early next year, which will include a strength and focus on prevention and specific guidance on the considerations that need to be given to children and young people with additional support needs. I met this morning with the National Autistic Society Scotland and that was one of the issues that came up during our discussions around the issue of exclusions. In terms of the approach that is taken in relation to teachers and teacher input, I think that it would be fair to say first of all that we have to ensure that we do not create the perception that those teachers who are not additional support for learning teachers are not in a position of capability to support and deal with some of the issues that children with additional support needs face. We have seen an increase in the number of classroom assistants who are available to support those teachers. 111 is the increase that we have seen in relation to classroom assistants. Teachers have a range of opportunities through initial teacher training but then through continuous professional development to build those skills in order to deal with some of the issues that they may face in their classroom. The point that was made by Mr Johnson is not about reducing bureaucracy but the fundamental point about reduction of bureaucracy is that it does not just free teachers up to be able to teach, it also frees teachers up to be able to undertake that continuous professional development, which enables them to harness and enhance their skills. Ross Thompson highlighted the situation in Aberdeen. In relation to Jeremy Balfour's point about special schools and the potential reduction in relation to those, I was going to highlight some examples from Aberdeen, which is also my local area. I would look at Miland School and Buxburn academy. Those schools would not be classified as special needs schools but, within them, there is a strong additional support need provision contained within those mainstream schools, so there are different approaches being taken. I will reflect on the point that Jeremy Balfour has made. Presiding Officer, there have been a number of points made, which I am not having time to cover. I will look at the official report and will happily write to members if there are points that I perhaps need to expand on beyond the debate. I call on Mark Ruskell to close this debate. A very tight six minutes, please. Thank you very much Presiding Officer. I would also like to declare an interest as a councillor in Stirling with some difficult choices to make in the months to come over budgets. I would like to thank all the contributions, including from the ministers as well, this afternoon. I think that we have had some very thoughtful contributions. I think that all the speeches outlined is that there is a pressing need to ensure that every pupil, every pupil with additional needs has the support in place to ensure that they receive a high-quality education. If we are truly to meet this Parliament's aim of closing the attainment gap, then we must support all of our pupils to learn in the way that best suits them. I welcome the announcement from the minister around the review around mainstreaming. I think that that is an important point that was raised by Liz Smith and the minister. The number of children needing additional support has risen dramatically in the past five years, which was reflected on by a number of members, with one in five pupils now estimated to have additional needs. Again, I thank Mark McDonald for pointing out that the definition of children needing additional support has been widened recently. I think that the change in definition took place in 2010, but the increase of 16 per cent has since 2013. That is not an explanation for the increase. Mark Ruskell pointed out on board. The key thing now is to think about how we meet the needs of those children who have been defined as needing additional support. There is a recognition that, particularly under getting it right for every child, the centred approach on the needs of the individual is important. Fulton MacGregor raised an issue around the disparity in how we identify those children with additional needs between councils. As a father of a child with Aspergers, I have to say that the early assessment that he got in P1 when he started school was excellent, and the support from the professionals in the classroom and additional support workers and others has been fantastic. However, I see those pressures building up in the classroom over resources. It is a concern for me as a father, as it is indeed for many constituents who get in touch with me and members in the chamber. We know that children with additional needs continue to have lower attainment than their peers and are more likely to be excluded from school, a point raised by Patrick Harvie. Those children are also less likely in their classmates to enroll in further education, training or a job on leaving school. Jeremy Balfour raised an important point about the transition from school out into the wider world, that we need to take cognisance of. We are tightening local authority budgets. We have seen the number of highly qualified additional support for learning teachers, full by over 460 teachers since 2009. We need to pause and have a look at what is happening in the councils. We could argue about the causes of some of the cuts that are coming through, whether audit Scotland figures include NDR or whatever, or whether it is all Westminster's fault, but the reality is that those cuts are happening. It is time not just to stand still but to reverse those cuts and to put the provision of additional support back into our classrooms again. It was a point made strongly by Ross Greer and Monica Lennon and Ian Gray reflecting on his extensive experience. The reality is that when I talk to directors of education, they are under enormous pressure, James Dorn. Yes, there are local decisions that need to be made, but directors of education are the biggest budget holders within local authorities. Although I recognise that teacher salaries as the biggest component of that biggest budget have been protected under local government settlement, the fact is that the other aspects of that education budget have not. They are being cut. It is an unintended consequence of that policy because we are now seeing pressure on other areas within education. Daniel Johnson pointed out some of the impacts that are being felt in the classroom, reduced budget for paper, reduced budget for caretakers, reduced budget for music tuition specialists and others, but it is a particular concern of many of our constituents that these cuts are falling on to ASL teachers and classroom assistants. We have some choices here. Liz Smith talked about the flexibility that is needed within the Scottish attainment challenge fund, which is an issue that I brought up in the chamber last week. I am glad to hear that the cabinet secretary is reflecting on that and how we allow head teachers to have genuine flexibility about how that fund is used. That is a welcome step forward, but there is a more fundamental political choice here that has been raised by a number of members, including Tavish Scott, Ian Gray, Monica Lennon and my green colleagues. We have got a political choice here. We have got tax-raising powers in this Parliament. Yes, councils will now have the ability to finally raise council tax. It will be interesting to see which councils take that up, but it is capped at 3 per cent. With such an important topic and so many other pressures on local authorities, health and social care and the sale of assets and reduction of services, we need to make progress. The Greens motion today is a wake-up call to the Scottish Government that these vital post-inascals cannot be overlooked in order to make real progress on closing the attainment gap. Training in additional support needs is not currently mandatory for teachers or support staff, so in raising more revenue for education, local authorities can also be in a better position to ensure more staff. Both teachers and assistants are better informed of how to respond to pupils' needs, behaviour and address any problems as they arrive. We respect that decisions on education spending lie with local authorities. Our call is for the Government to provide them with the financial resources to address the growing shortfall in ASL in our schools, ensuring that every individual child's needs are not just assessed and recognised, but acted on to deliver their full potential.