Additional Support for Learning: review

Challenges across the system

Many children and young people are well supported across Scotland, and progress reporting on delivery of the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan highlights clear improvements and strengthened partnership working.

Staff across early learning and childcare and schools demonstrate strong, committed practice. However, the system is now carrying a scale of need that exceeds what its current structures were designed to manage. These pressures shape how support is identified, planned, and experienced day to day.

Increasing demand and complexity

Across early learning and childcare, and schools, staff describe a marked increase in the number of children and young people requiring support, alongside a shift in the profile and complexity of needs. Examples reported include neurodivergence, communication needs, dysregulation, and developmental delays at earlier ages. Many learners now require sustained support. Pressures are emerging earlier across services, with staff in early learning and childcare reporting a shift in the number of two and three-year-olds requiring targeted or specialist support.

This shift has implications for how support is organised and delivered. Needs that were once considered “additional” are now a routine part of classroom life, placing greater demands on time, expertise, and coordination. It also places increasing demands on staff knowledge, depth of understanding and confidence in responding to complex and sustained needs within mainstream settings.

Adaptation within stretched systems

In response to these pressures, staff across Scotland demonstrate deep commitment and flexibility. Teachers, practitioners, support staff, and leaders adapt learning, routines and relationships in real time to help children and young people feel safe, understood, and able to participate. Support staff play a central role in providing continuity and supporting children and young people. Evidence from national engagement events and local authority submissions to the Education, Children and Young People Committee Additional Support for Learning inquiry, highlights that staff are absorbing tasks that previously sat with specialist services.

This adaptability is a strength, but it also reflects structures that have not kept pace with current levels of need. In many settings, day-to-day delivery depends heavily on professional judgement and local flexibility. Where access to specialist support is delayed, schools often sustain support while awaiting wider service input.

At the same time, professional learning has not kept up with the breadth, scale and complexity of need now present in mainstream settings, and staff confidence can be stretched as a result. Engagement with pupil support staff also reflects wide variation in induction, access to training and protected time for learning, reinforcing these pressures.

Timing and predictability of support

Staff are often able to identify emerging needs early. However, the timing of support does not always align with this. This is evident from the early years onwards.

Local authorities and staff report significant delays in accessing some specialist support. Families also highlight experiencing the same delays. In many cases, support becomes more structured or reliable only once needs become more pronounced. This is evident where access to specialist services is required, and where thresholds or waiting times influence how quickly support can be put in place.

This affects how early and preventative support is experienced. In some areas, support remains contingent on diagnosis rather than need, despite the values and principles of Getting It Right For Every Child. When support is delayed, needs can escalate, adding pressure to children, young people, families, and staff. Evidence indicates that staged intervention is not always experienced as a preventative model, with support sometimes becoming more dependable at later stages.

These patterns reflect a growing gap between how the system was designed to operate and how support is experienced by children, young people, and families.

Variation in local planning systems

Local authorities have developed a range of different planning approaches, staged intervention models, and thresholds to apply national expectations in their context. Local authority submissions to the Education, Children and Young People Committee Additional Support for Learning inquiry highlight substantial variation in thresholds, documentation, processes, and the degree of multi-agency involvement. Young people also report inconsistent participation in planning processes.

This variation shapes practice. Similar needs may be interpreted and responded to differently across areas, meaning access to support is not always determined by need alone. It also affects national visibility, as differences in planning arrangements and definitions make it harder to build a coherent national picture of need across Scotland.

Limited visibility of progress

Across the evidence, there is stronger visibility of recorded processes such as categorisation than of children and young people’s needs, progress, and the impact of support. Many aspects of a child’s development, including communication, participation, relationships, and emotional regulation, are well understood by staff but not always visible beyond the local context. Families, staff, and young people emphasise that success is personal, varied and often unrelated to attainment measures, yet national and school-level measures do not fully reflect this.

This limits the ability to understand learner progress clearly and to use information effectively to inform planning and improvement.

Variation in experience across Scotland

Children and young people with similar needs do not always experience the same level or type of support. While national policy sets out a clear ambition for additional support for learning, the way this is experienced varies depending on local processes and access to support.

Families describe experiences that can differ widely across Scotland. Local authorities report variation in staffing, access to specialist services, physical environments, and available provision. Early learning and childcare settings also highlight differences in operational capacity, resource responsibility, and awareness of support pathways.

For families, this can make the processes difficult to navigate. It can make it harder for families to understand how decisions are made, what support should be available, and what can reasonably be expected. For children and young people, it can mean that support is not always predictable or equitable, and that their views do not always feature.

This can affect confidence in how the system operates, particularly where support is experienced as variable or challenging to navigate.

A gap between ambition and everyday experience

Scotland’s ambition for supporting all learners is clear and widely supported. However, the patterns described above indicate that support is not consistently experienced. Evidence shows a rise in applications to the Additional Support Needs Tribunal. Local authorities and national organisations describe increasing escalation, highlighting system-level strain and variation in early intervention pathways.

This reflects a gap between national ambition and everyday experience. Addressing this requires greater clarity, consistency, and alignment in how additional support for learning operates across the system. The following section sets out the requirements to help support be delivered more effectively.