Count us in explored emerging principles and practices in inclusive education in Scotland. It suggested that services for children should have high expectations and an ethos of achievement and that such achievement should be broadly based. Count us in also focused on removing barriers to learning, particularly any that prevented individuals or groups from thriving in schools, and on developing a positive appreciation of diversity. This diversity includes the varied economic and social backgrounds of young people and also their varied learning needs and preferred learning styles.
More Choices More Chances sets out a strategy for tackling the issue of young people who do not manage to sustain their engagement in education, employment or training after they leave school. Successfully tackling this issue depends on us transforming some of our practices in schools in a preventative way, for example through curriculum flexibility, meeting the learning needs of all pupils, ensuring positive relationships between school staff and young people at the time of transition and developing greater personalisation of learning pathways through the secondary school stages and transition to post-school.
The Code of Practice for the Additional Support for Learning Act, 2004, explains the duties placed on local authorities to help pupils with additional support needs make the transition from school to post-school life successfully. These duties include seeking and taking account of information from appropriate agencies (i.e. any other local authority, any NHS Board, Careers Scotland, any FE college or any Institute of Higher Education), seeking and taking account of the views of the pupil, and passing on information to the appropriate agencies, but only with the approval of the parent, in the case of a child under 16, or the young person himself/herself.
The Scottish Government noted in their document Skills for Scotland: A Skills Strategy for a Competitive Scotland the need for us to:
The Skills Strategy identifies overlapping clusters of skills:
Previous HMIE support documents on transitions include Ensuring Effective Transitions. That document notes that:
‘An effective transition should guarantee continuity and progression in children’s learning. School staff, parents, all professionals and support agencies need to work together to ensure this. … In recent years, educational establishments have improved the transfer procedures to enhance the transition process and allow individual pupils to feel valued and well prepared for the next stage of their education.’ |
While this is the case for transitions between schools and at different stages, a considerable gap in the service we provide for pupils is at the transition stage between secondary school and post-school. Some of the advice in Ensuring Effective Transitions can usefully be applied to the transition process to post-school.
In Moving on from school to college HMIE outlined a series of principles that apply to young people with additional support needs at the point of transition from school to college. The principles included: having the highest expectations of all young people; involving them in decisions about their own future; developing effective partnership working within an overall strategy for inclusion; respecting the adult status of those concerned; and sustaining arrangements and recognising the need for continuing collaborative support. These same principles apply more generally.
The Missing out report also listed points for action that need to be tackled to move things forward. These included better measures of achievement and better use of these measures, for example to benchmark progress of particular groups of individuals who may be at risk of missing out on educational opportunities and better use of information about individuals at points of transition. It demonstrated the need for early identification and prompt intervention for individuals as soon as things start to go wrong, a principle that applies equally at the post-school stage. It stressed the success that can be achieved through inter-agency support for individuals. And it described the strengths in adopting flexible practices in meeting individual's needs including practices in delivering education and vocational training.
Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) seeks to promote action where necessary to improve a child or young person’s well-being. Where action involves multi-agency activity, there should be one integrated plan and the child and family should if at all possible be involved in its development and implementation.
The dimensions of well-being are defined in operational terms as seeking to achieve the four capacities (successful learners, effective contributors, responsible citizens, confident individuals) underpinned by the seven indicators of well-being (safe, nurtured, healthy, active, achieving, respected, responsible, included). Action, integrated where necessary, should focus on improving outcomes for the child or young person in relation to the indicators.
Central elements of GIRFEC run through a range of policies including Curriculum for Excellence and More Choices, More Chances. GIRFEC relies on effective co-operation between universal services (health and education) and other services relevant to a child or young person’s well-being.