The truth about the explosion of children with additional support needs in Scotland's classrooms
According to recent figures, 43 per cent of school pupils have an additional support need
In 2026, Scotland faces a Holyrood election in which education should play a vital role in determining the outcome. Regardless of where we stand on other issues, or on the SNP’s record over what has come to feel like the last hundred years, our schools are not in a good place, neither in terms of where they were in the past, nor by international comparison, most gratingly with England (where everything, is, apparently, just baaad). Politically, it’s an open goal.
However, so far, all parties have been rather cagey about what their manifestos will say about schools, teachers, and young people, but there are recurring rumours about the issue of additional support needs, and well there might be.
Among the debris of educational statistics in 2025, the most alarming one, in a crowded field, came right at the end of the year: 43 per cent of our school pupils are now classified as having an additional support need – 43 per cent!
Naysayers’ nonsense
Now, the naysayers, particularly of my generation, say: “We didn’t have anyone with additional support needs in my day.” That, of course, is just nonsense. That silly clown who was always in trouble; the girl who couldn’t read when she was ten; the strange, quiet boy with nae pals – well, there’s a fair-to-middling chance that they had additional support needs, and that their school lives (indeed, their whole lives) would have been much easier with a diagnosis of ADHD, dyslexia or ASD, or some other acronym.
It would have helped teachers help them to learn; it would have made them happier people; it would have made their parents understand them better. Oh, 1965…
That said, there is a big bit of me that thinks 43 per cent doesn’t make sense, and isn’t helpful – particularly since the statistics seem to suggest that figure isn’t spread evenly across geographical areas or social classes (there are more ASN kids in middle-class schools, now why would that be?)
Part of the problem is that the definition of additional support needs is very wide: it includes, for example, being a young carer, being partially sighted, not having English as your first language, being bereaved, being academically very able, being bullied and being a bully.
And then, of course, there are all the neurodivergent conditions with which more children are being diagnosed every day except Christmas. Now of course teachers want to help all these children and those in the many, many other categories, and, of course, probably all the Scottish political parties are going to say "we’ll solve the ASN crisis in Scottish schools".
Ah, but they won’t. At least not by pretending they will spend the money necessary to helping each individual child currently with an ASN. And the number will just keep growing, because all children have individual needs – that’s obvious.
The talented musician may need extra (and free) violin lessons; the deaf child may need a signer; the autistic child may need a quiet space on demand; the bully may need a restorative conversation (OK, kidding).
READ MORE: The consequences of falling numbers of teachers and schools in Scotland are obvious and profound
‘Universally challenged’ children
There’s also the problem of young people who just aren’t suited to the things (really quite limited things) that schools set out to teach them. Kids who do not have an ASN but who don’t do well in maths, French or history.
A very good head of support for learning once characterised such young people to me as “universally challenged”. At one time, when the word ‘intelligent’ was still used in educational discourse, we might have described them as ‘not academically able’ or used other, blunter words.
Of course, there are different ‘types of intelligence’. I’m in awe of anyone who understands how to mend a broken car or paint a picture or keep a rhythm (the very hardest thing I do these days is not writing things like this, pshaw, but learning how to play the ukelele) but schools are schools.
Don’t these ‘universally challenged’ pupils deserve individual intervention every bit as much as a clever child with emotional problems, or an able, hardworking child who is acquiring English as a second language?
All children need ‘additional support’
The truth is all young people have individual needs, and require ‘additional support’. This, however, is not possible for the typical teacher with the average class – say 28 nine-year-olds ranging from the First Minister of 2060 to the nice wee lad in the corner who cannot currently read.
So, I think 43 per cent might as well be 100 per cent in terms of the likelihood of getting real support that actually makes a difference. All the grandstanding from political parties about ASN children will come to nothing, and teachers everywhere – the ones in actual classrooms, not the ones hiding at Education Scotland or in the Scottish Cabinet – know this.
Really what is necessary is for classroom teachers and head teachers, with input from psychological specialists and parents, to determine which children can, realistically, be brought closer to their potential in a mainstream classroom with 26 other kids there.
Then we must concentrate our resources on the few (I’m guessing no more than 5 per cent) who need the most support, in learning environments which may sometimes be mainstream classrooms, sometimes hubs in schools and sometimes centres providing special help.
And we all need to stop pretending we’re suddenly and miraculously going to find and use the huge increase in educational spending that will solve this crisis any other way.
Oh but… teachers, young people, parents… sadly I expect next to nothing to change. Happy New Year, teachers, this oldie is with you in spirit!
Cameron Wyllie, a former head teacher, writes a blog called A House in Joppa and is the author of Is There A Pigeon in the Room? My Life in Schools
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