Achi news desk-
Since 2013, the total number of ASN pupils across the country has almost doubled, rising from 131,527 to 258,905.
This creates immediate problems by putting a strain on the school and welfare systems, which need to grow alongside the increasing numbers to provide adequate support to the students who need it most.
Read more: Scottish Government warned about education cuts
Students requiring support for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), English as an additional language, social, emotional and behavioral difficulties and dyslexia are the largest categories of ASN.
Data shows that the number of students receiving support for each of these needs has increased every year over the past decade – sometimes as many as 5,600 pupils a year.
And since 2013, the growth in these categories has been non-stop.
9,946 pupils were receiving additional support for ASD in 2013. In the latest census of 2023, that number had risen to 30,179.
This accounts for the third largest increase in a single category over the last decade, behind only English as an additional language (an increase of 34,447 pupils), and social, emotional and behavioral difficulties (an increase of 36,363 pupils).
Students who receive support for social, emotional and behavioral difficulties consistently make up the largest ASN group each year.
This is partly because the government collects data on everything pupils receive support for, which means that those with multiple needs can appear multiple times across relevant categories, even though they are only given once. count in the final total.
The government’s official description of social, emotional and behavioral difficulties states that students with a range of needs – including physical and emotional disorders – should be included in this category.
Due to the growth trends across almost every category, experts in children’s services have said that schools, teachers, local authorities, families and even private practices are struggling to meet the needs of ASN students.
Read more: ASN teachers down, ASN pupil rate doubling over a decade
As well as growing in number, many children’s needs will grow more complex and more severe the longer they go untreated or, perhaps worse, undiagnosed.
And the fact that numbers are increasing gradually year after year, rather than as a result of a single jump that could be attributed to a distant factor – such as the Covid-19 pandemic or a change in reporting methods – is also a sign of progress. problem.
In fact, growth in the total number of ASN pupils slowed significantly in the years during and immediately after the pandemic.
Between 2016 and 2019, the number increased by an average of 15,666 pupils per year. Between 2019 and 2022, the average increase was 8,579.
In contrast, the 2023 census showed an increase of 17,396 ASN pupils, the largest single increase since 2013 and more in line with pre-pandemic figures.
This helps to suggest that reporting consistency, which would have been more difficult during the years of lockdown and distance learning, is contributing significantly to the growth rates. The Scottish Government changed the way ASNs are reported in 2010 to improve accuracy, and increased awareness, as well as changes in the way each reason for an ASN is defined, can also lead to increased numbers.
All of that is important because identifying and supporting students while they are still at school is essential for their development, experts have said.
Once they graduate or move on, access to key resources becomes much more difficult, if not nearly impossible, depending on their geographic location, social context and other factors outside of their control. This is already starting to play out for children with speech, language and communication needs.
Following recent news that Aberdeenshire Council has voted to cut back on speech therapy services in schools, Glenn Carter, head of office at the Royal Scottish College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT), said waiting times could increase waiting times for services and leaving many more young people undiagnosed and untreated.
This creates a compounding problem.
“Early intervention is always our priority,” he said. “The longer a communication need goes untreated, the more serious it can be.”
That is especially true for young children, he said. The RCSLT promotes working with new parents – and even expectant mothers – to lay a foundation for positive communication habits as early as possible.
Although it only represents one of the various needs identified, speech and communication concerns highlight how ignoring or failing to adequately support pupils with additional needs can create problems in the future.
Read more: Aberdeenshire speech therapy cuts labeled visually impaired
According to recent statistics, 88% of long-term unemployed young men have an identified communication need. A further 60% of young people who come into contact with the justice system have some form of speech, language or communication need.
The current state of speech and communication support needs also clearly shows how wide the gap is between students’ needs and providers’ ability to meet them.
According to the 2023 data, 33,450 pupils had communication support needs or a language or speech disorder. That is 4,300 more than in 2022 and over 17,000 more than in 2013.
Yet the RCSLT reports that 6,503 children are waiting to receive speech and language therapy in Scotland.
The longest average wait for initial contact with a speech and language therapist is 13 months. And the longest average wait to receive individual therapy is 17 months.
The situation is only expected to worsen: in the last five years, the longest average waiting time for initial contact has increased by over seven months; for individual therapy, it has increased over 10 months.
However, communication is just one area where young people need extra help. The numbers in others are equally impressive and constantly increasing.
As Stephen McGhee, managing director for Spark of Genius and a member of the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition, said, growing needs are being met by a similar steady decline in the workforce and funding needed to provide support.
“At the SCSC we tend to release two main sets of figures: one relates to additional support needs and the other relates to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) waiting times. The SCSC releases the figures every quarter and I get phone calls from the media to discuss the issues and then another quarter goes by and nothing changes.
“We’ve been doing these reviews for what feels like a decade and we’ve only seen negative numbers about children’s ASN or waiting times.”
Recently, the SCSC reported that funding for ASN has decreased by 33.9% since 2013. During the same period, there were at least 546 specialist ASN teachers. Meanwhile, the number of students who need extra support has almost doubled.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said spending on extra support for learning reached a record £926 million last year.
“To help tackle the growing demand in this area and the number of additional pupil support staff FTE has increased by 725 (4.4%), bringing the total number of support staff in Scotland in 2023 to 17,330 .
“There were also 2,898 teachers across all sectors with additional support needs as their main subject in 2023, an increase on recent years.
It was added that the government has committed £15 million a year to support schools with better provision of support staff and £11 million to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs.
But Mr McGhee said that even the numbers do not show the full results. There is a difference in the support staff and teachers who have received training in specific additional support needs such as autism, dyslexia and more.
“There are teachers within each class or cohort who have knowledge and expertise in specific additional support needs. Apart from that, there will also be teachers who have had limited training in specific additional support needs, as well as support staff who are not teachers . at all.”
This means that the loss of specialist ASN teachers could affect some students with specific needs much more than others. And as students have already told The Herald, living with ASN in Scottish schools can be difficult enough already.
