‘We had to leave Angus to get our disabled son’s additional support needs met in school’

Six-year-old Harrison Meston’s family had to leave Angus to get him into a school they felt could meet his additional support needs.

He is among more than a third of pupils in Scotland with additional support needs, which teachers and parents say schools struggle to meet.

Harrison has significant and multiple disabilities, including hydrocephalus which causes developmental, physical and intellectual impairments. He also has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. He struggles to communicate, needs help with feeding and can’t walk unaided.

Despite this he was assessed as able to attend the special needs unit of a mainstream school.

All started well in P1 at Andover Primary School, in Brechin, but went downhill when staff changed.

Mum Angie said: “Everything went drastically wrong and we lost trust in the school.”

Over just a few weeks Harrison lost so much weight that Angie had to take in the waistband of his trousers.

She said: “He was coming home from school saying things like ‘that’s nice juice mummy, please’. This was him telling me he is thirsty.

“One day he came home and he said ‘mince and tatties, please, now’.

“I opened his lunch box and saw he had only had one cocktail sausage.

Harrison needs to be encouraged to eat and drink. Set meal times in the unit left insufficient time for him be properly fed, Angie said.

A fall in the playground

“The school told me they didn’t have the time.”

Then she got a phone call asking her to collect Harrison as he had fallen in the playground.

She said: “I asked how he managed to fall and they said ‘we don’t know’. They were supposed to be with him all the time.”

Harrison needs someone behind him when uses his walking frame, she said.

But she discovered there was one teaching assistant with four children and Harrison had wandered off.

That was the final straw for Angie and husband Blair and they took Harrison out of the school last December.

No place at local special school

She said: “They admitted they couldn’t accommodate Harrison and they tried to push us into an ASN base in another mainstream school.

“I said no. He’s going to be failed in any other ASN base because they will all be equally equipped.”

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Angus Council has no special school so Angie and Blair pushed for a place for Harrison at Kingspark School, the special school in Dundee.

The education service eventually agreed to apply for a place at Carronhill School, a special school in Stonehaven.

But as the family lived outside the catchment area this was refused.

So at great personal expense, they moved their family and aggregate business out of Angus.

Angie said: “We’ve uprooted our whole lives and moved to Portlethen. We did this purely in the hope that Harrison would be granted a space in Carronhill.

“There was no guarantee but we had to do what we thought was in our boy’s best interests.

“Our gamble paid off and after months of waiting he was granted a place starting after the summer holidays.

“We’ve had to fight for everything for Harrison since the day he was born. We never thought we’d have to fight for an education.

Savings spent and family left behind

“The rent up here is three times what our mortgage was. The council tax is more than double.

“We were badly affected by the floods last October and our business lost everything; we’ve only just managed to rebuild this and now spent all our savings moving here.”

Angie has older children who Harrison used to see daily. He now only sees them and his grandparents once or twice a month.

She said: “We don’t know anyone here so we’ve no support. I’ve been on my own with the boys since April while Blair’s out working.

“Harrison’s missed out on nearly the entire P1 session. It’s heart breaking.

“Things really need to change drastically in Angus for the future of all ASN children.”

When Angus schools meet additional support needs

With the right staffing and resources, education in a mainstream school can work well for children with additional support needs.

Elsewhere in Brechin, Erin Mair, 9, is a perfect example of that.

She has cerebral palsy, paralysis down one side, sight impairment and learning difficulties.

But she spends most of the day in the mainstream P5 class at Maisondieu Primary School.

She also gets extra lessons out of class in numeracy and literacy with teaching assistants.

Dad Craig said: “We have regular meetings with the teachers when they go over paperwork with us and what they are doing with her.

“She has really good relationships with the teachers and the teaching assistants.

“They have been absolutely fantastic and I fully expect that to continue.

“Already they are talking about her transition to Brechin High School. They plan for her to be in mainstream classes where she can, and where she will struggle she will go to the ASN unit.”

More than one in three schoolchildren in Scotland has ASNs

More than a third of schoolchildren across Scotland have additional support needs.

Those needs can range from complex disabilities to emotional trauma such as a family breakdown or bullying.

Angus Council says its schools share the increase in level and complexity of additional support needs reported nationally.

A spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on individual children or their specific circumstances, however, all parental complaints are investigated in line with council policy.

“We try our best to work with parents to ensure that their child’s needs can be met locally, where possible, but acknowledge that some children may require a more specialised provision dependent on the complexity of their needs.”

‘Intolerable’ gap

But according to teaching unions and parent groups the gap between how those needs should be met and how they can be met is “intolerable”.

Several of them recently issued a joint appeal to the Scottish Government and local authorities to provide extra staff and resources.

Andrea Bradley, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, said: “The under-funding and under-resourcing of ASN provision is a national scandal which must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

“The lack of ASN resourcing and staffing is letting down the large and growing number of young people in need of additional support, a very large number of whom also live in poverty, piling untold pressure on already over-burdened teaching and support staff, and disrupting the learning and teaching environments across our schools.”

Record spending on ASNs provision

The Scottish Government says meeting additional support needs is a matter for local authorities, which have statutory responsibility for delivering education in their area.

But a spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government is committed to improving outcomes for young people with additional support needs.

“That is why spending on additional support for learning reached a record high of £926 million in the latest available figures [2022-23] to help address growing demand in this area.

“Additionally, through our continued investment of £15 million per year, the number of additional pupils support staff has also increased by 725 (4.4%) in the last year alone, bringing the total number of support staff in Scotland in 2023 to 17,330.”