Our Director of Practice and Innovation, Joe Long, has recently had an exclusive printed in the Herald. Here's what he wrote:

Six years ago Scottish Autism launched a joint-report with Children In Scotland and National Autistic Society Scotland entitled ‘Not Included, Not Engaged, Not Involved’. The report looked at the experience of young autistic learners in Scotland following a survey of more than 1400 parents. It revealed some very troubling findings.

It showed that a third of pupils whose parents responded had been subjected to informal or ‘unlawful’ exclusions. This relates to a young person being sent home from school during the course of a day with no formal recording of an exclusion. More than a quarter of parents also revealed that their child had been placed on a part-time timetable within the previous two years.

Schools can be extremely stressful places for autistic learners without the right consideration of the sensory environment, the way that teachers communicate, or accommodations to an individual learners needs. Too often the stress of such experiences lead to young people being excluded from learning and unable to cope – in these instances a phone call home is often the outcome.

At the time of our report we called for better teacher training, an end to informal exclusions, and no more inappropriate use of part-time timetables. We explicitly called for schools to stop using the catch-all term of ‘authorised absence’, and for clear guidance on the use of part-time timetables.
Then Education Secretary, John Swinney, was robust in his view that unlawful exclusions were unacceptable and should not be happening in any circumstances.

So, where are we now?

Sadly, our national advice line continues to hear from parents and families who receive calls from the school to collect their young person mid-morning, oftentimes on a daily basis. We continue to hear of young people who are only attending school for part of the day, with little to no provision being made for the time when they are not in school. And we still hear of young people who are completely unable to return to school as a result of their distress.
Parents regularly tell us that they have had to give up work because they know that they will receive a phone call mid-morning to come and collect their child. As long as this issue remains hidden and not recorded, it seems there will not be the drive to implement effective approaches to ensure that young people can be supported and included within the education system.

The fact that, six years on from our report, there is still no measurement of the scale of informal or unlawful exclusions is unacceptable. This is a change which the Scottish Government could make very quickly and very easily, which would help shine a light on the true scale of the issue. Based on what we are hearing we have no reason to believe the use of these measures has decreased since our report was published, but nobody knows the true picture.
There also remains a lack of robust guidance in place around part-time timetabling. Parents tell us that they feel pressured into accepting a part-time timetable as they are told their young person is unable to cope with a full day at school. Local authorities ought to have a duty to provide alternative provision to cover the remainder of the school day, but lack of budget and of available providers often results in the young person simply spending time at home with a parent who is then unable to go out to work.

We know that educators within our schools are working to deliver the best possible outcomes for young people under increasing pressures. This issue is simply a reflection of a sustained erosion of specialism within education, and of a perspective which sees ‘inclusion’ as being about whether a young person is sitting in a mainstream classroom, rather than whether the environment best serves their individual needs.

At the recent SNP Conference in Edinburgh the current Education Secretary, Jenny Gilruth stated her desire to focus on ‘the ABCs’ of education, with the A standing for ‘absence’. We have concerns that this focus may not account for the reality facing autistic pupils and their families that absence is not a choice.

We need a sense of urgency from the Scottish Government who could take steps now to revise the guidance relating to exclusions and part-time timetabling to ensure we have an accurate picture of the scale of this issue and can then take the necessary steps to address it. Otherwise we will simply continue to see young autistic learners and their families facing these desperate scenarios.

The full article in the Herald can be found here.