Education Writer James McEnaney on what it would take for inclusion to succeed

A little over a year ago, The Herald published a special investigation into additional support needs (ASN) provision in Scotland’s schools.

The work behind the series had been sparked by official statistics and formal reports, most if not all of which seemed to indicate major shortcomings in the level of support available to children, their families, and their teachers.

We were also acting on the sorts of concerns that had been raised, again and again, by parents from across the country, many of whom feel like they are spending all of their time fighting just to ensure that their children have the bare minimum of support. This is especially true for families seeking placements in specialist provision, who fear that forcing their child into a mainstream classroom could have consequences that might range from ‘not ideal’ all the way to ‘actively dangerous’.

To be honest, the origins of the series probably went back even further, because a lot of the problems we have been hearing about over the last couple of years feel like an inevitable outcome after the warnings that I’d heard, and the pressures I’d experienced, when I joined the teaching profession a decade and a half ago.

As is the case for so many, this issue is also deeply personal. My colleague Rebecca McCurdy wrote about receiving a life-changing dyspraxia diagnosis at the age of 21. My son and brother are both autistic, and although my boy attends a mainstream school with good, light-touch support, his uncle moved to a........

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