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Support from classroom teachers became the most common form of support received by pupils with additional support needs in 2023 - surpassing that provided by ASN teachers and support staff.

Now Scottish government data, published today, shows that support provided by classroom teachers continues to grow: in 2024, they were supporting well over five times more pupils with ASN than in 2019.

In 2024,168,062 pupils with ASN in Scotland were recorded as receiving support from their classroom teachers, compared with around 130,000 in 2023 and around 29,000 in 2019.

An in February, which criticised the government and councils for failing to plan properly for the inclusion of pupils with ASN in mainstream schools, highlighted this “growth” in teacher support - as well as the lack of “significant change in other categories of support”.

The report said that the increase in support from classroom teachers could be down to improved recording, or “more specialist support not being available”.

However, Audit Scotland’s researchers had access to the 2023 data only; now, 2024 data shows that demands on classroom teachers continue to rise.

• Background: Audit Scotland publishes ‘damning’ report on support for ASN pupils
• Data: How many pupils are persistently absent in your local authority?
• Related: Mainstream education ‘intolerable’ for children with ASN, find MSPs

The official figures on the nature of support provided to pupils with ASN are among a raft of data published by the government today, which looks at the pupil population, teacher numbers, class sizes and support staff.

The data also shows the number of pupils requiring support for “interrupted learning” has more than doubled since 2019.

In that year, more than 5,500 pupils required support for interrupted learning, but in 2024 it was more than 13,700 pupils.

This increase was also highlighted in Audit Scotland additional support for learning briefing, although again the researchers only had access to less stark 2023 data.

Audit Scotland said the rise in pupils needing support for “interrupted learning” was evidence of the “long-term impact on the wellbeing of pupils” of the Covid-19 pandemic.

School attendance has also been a problem for schools since the pandemic, with Scotland recording some of the worst rates of persistent absence in the UK.

Other reasons for pupil support

However, interrupted learning is not the most common reason for Scottish pupils requiring extra support.

In 2024, 70,988 young people were recorded as needing additional support for “social, emotional and behavioural difficulty”, up from around 63,000 in 2023 and 49,000 in 2019.

In total, 40.5 per cent of the pupil population in Scotland has a recorded additional support need.

However, while the number of pupils in need of support has hit a record high, the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition (SCSC) revealed today that the number of specialist ASN teachers fell to a record low of 2,837 in 2024.

The upshot is that while in 2014 each ASN teacher was supporting 40 pupils, by 2024 they were supporting 100 such pupils.

The SCSC is calling for greater resourcing from both the Scottish government and local authorities for ASN.

It says that, while it supports the presumption of mainstreaming, “it is difficult to see how this is functioning properly, given the fall in specialist support and increase in the number of those with ASN”.

Scottish Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said: “Children with additional support needs have been abandoned by the SNP, who have let teacher numbers collapse while need soars.”

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