The Scotsman Bulletin July 23 2024 #Education
Scotsman head of news speaks to education correspondent Calum Ross about his exclusive story on "super schools"
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Tuesday.
00:12My name is Dale Miller.
00:13I'm head of news at the Scotsman and I'm joined by our education correspondent, Callum Ross.
00:19Callum, we'll come back to you.
00:21Still plenty of education issues bubbling over during the school holidays,
00:25but I want to talk about the front page of the Scotsman first.
00:30And we led on the warning of rubbish piles on streets as pay offer rejected.
00:35Two unions, including GMB, met yesterday.
00:39They made announcements out the back of those meetings that they were pressing ahead with strikes.
00:43Those strikes, particularly surrounding waste workers, look set to take place next month in August.
00:50Now, we all know that is festival season in Edinburgh.
00:54And I think anyone that visited the capital two years ago and saw food, waste, bags of rubbish lying around in the streets,
01:03the city stinking during the warm weather would know what a bad advert it was for the city in general.
01:09We are staring down the potential of that scenario.
01:13Again, it is not another breakthrough.
01:16We're expecting updates over the next 24, 48 hours from COSLA,
01:20which is the council's umbrella body that is negotiating with the unions to try and reach an outcome here.
01:26But it's one to watch.
01:27If not, you may see rubbish in the streets again for the festivals, which start very soon.
01:35We're only a week away from the start of August now.
01:38We also covered the latest on the US Democrats' decision with Kamala Harris,
01:45firming to replace Biden as the candidate for the election to run up against Trump.
01:51And a great image on the front of the Scotsman of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, leaving the fourth after a series of repairs that have stretched out over weeks.
02:01Callum, there's a good story there that was referenced on the front page from yourself.
02:07You can read it currently at Scotsman.com.
02:10It's about super schools.
02:11And the fact that some recommendations being looked at could mean that we potentially move away from these schools.
02:19Can you talk us through the story a bit?
02:22That's right, Dale.
02:23I mean, the context to all this, of course, has really been the sort of explosion in recent years in terms of the number of pupils in Scotland with additional support needs.
02:34It's now more than a third of all pupils, kind of over 50 percent in some areas.
02:41And the proportions kind of almost doubled in the last decade.
02:45So MSPs on Holyrood's Education Committee have been looking into the kind of level of support for these ASN pupils.
02:54And some of the things they've been hearing from witnesses is concern about the kind of basically the design of school buildings, the physical environment.
03:05They call it particularly the kind of open plan design style we see at the moment.
03:10And in many new schools, the concerns are around sort of overstimulation for pupils, neurodivergent pupils, particularly, you know, people, pupils with autism and ADHD and things like that.
03:27And I think essentially the open plan buildings and, you know, huge super schools are often kind of considered too noisy, kind of too bright, essentially quite distracting for pupils.
03:40Neurodivergent pupils. Now, when Jenny Gilruth, the education secretary, was asked about these concerns by the same committee, she gave a pretty honest sort of answer.
03:50She said she was sympathetic to what was being said.
03:54But not only that, she went a bit further and kind of said that not only were some schools kind of too big for ASN pupils, she thought they were too big for pupils generally.
04:06And she specifically linked it to issues around kind of behaviour and attendance and things like that.
04:11So that was back in March.
04:13Since then, the committee's kind of reported and made recommendations, including in relation to the design of buildings.
04:20And Ms Gilruth has now come back and said that she's accepted the recommendations.
04:27Her officials are going to go away and look at the design.
04:32They're going to gather evidence and consult partners, basically as part of a kind of a big review.
04:40And the findings, you know, could start to influence school building design from as early as next year.
04:47And there could even be sort of new regulations or statutory guidelines for councils.
04:52So it seems like there is kind of action being taken on this issue.
04:59Calum, it'll be a big shift in thinking.
05:01I know a lot of the new schools in recent years that have come about in Scotland have effectively been these super schools.
05:09I know even close to where I live, Recyth, is getting a new school transfer of Inverkeithing High School.
05:16Again, that's going to be sort of a supersized school with thousands of students.
05:21I want to ask just about additional support needs students.
05:27We know the numbers have rocketed, is maybe the right word.
05:31It's just that they're being sort of probably categorized and found where they weren't in the past.
05:37But is this and the connections to the school violence issue, is this one of the biggest education issues the Scottish government's got to deal with at the moment?
05:46Oh, absolutely.
05:48It's huge.
05:49It's putting real pressure on, we hear it from teachers and support staff all the time.
05:55You know, teachers are having to deal with, you know, could be half the pupils in their class have different kind of needs and a lot of them are quite complex.
06:05And they're basically, you know, teaching unions and all the rest of that are saying that they need more support.
06:10They need more resources in schools to kind of help look after these pupils and deal with the issues at present.
06:18It's a massive issue and you're right, it is all interconnected with behavioural problems and dependency.
06:27Callum, thanks very much for talking us through that.
06:29You can read that full story at scotsman.com.
06:33Just go to the education tab in the navigation bar.
06:37You can read all the latest coverage from Callum on that and many more education issues.
06:43Please follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram and go out and buy a copy of The Scotsman tomorrow.
06:50You can expect more on the bin strikes and also John Swinney making an announcement about sustainable or net zero transport today.
06:59So you'll get the full and latest coverage from that.
07:02Thanks very much for joining us.