One child, many consequences

The case (which you can read about here), of a child with significant learning difficulties being turned down for a residential school place because his "educational needs" was "being met" fills me with fear that the great promise of the Additional Support for Learning(ASL) Act is being lost.

Although this is an Edinburgh Case, I don't know the details nor do I want to. But I was involved in long discussions with the then minister of educations Peter Peacock MSP about the ASL Act when it was being drafted. I gave evidence to two Scottish Parliamentary Committees about the consequences of the act for Local Authorities and I headed up the CoSLA Bill team in developing the Local Authority response. Based on that experience, this judge is wrong.

The Judge argues that as long as the childs "educational needs" are being met, then the social and care needs are not relevant. But the fundamental premise of the act was that any barrier to learning should be taken into account, and any barrier included those things outside school that could make school a better place, like social and care needs. This act was to help the whole child. in one fell swoop the whole child has been lost to the silos of the system. This is not good news and I would call on ministers to act and act now to change this interpertation..