Tag Archives: additional support needs

Sanne Dijkstra-Downie will, we hope, be an MSP in May. She is standing in the target constituency of Edinburgh Northern and heads the Lothians list.

At Scottish Conference this week, she spoke in our pre-manifesto debate to highlight one particular commitment which is particularly important to her – the provision of Pupil Support Assistants in schools. The pre-manifesto commits us to:

Boost in-class support in every school by inflation-proofing Pupil Equity 270 Funding, hiring more pupil support assistants (PSAs), and ensuring teachers 271 are given proper stable contracts instead of short-term and zero hours work.

Sanne said:

As one of your candidates in May I am so pleased to stand here to speak in support of our pre manifesto, and I absolutely love that line – change with fairness at its heart.

I know we talk a lot about change, and we talk a lot about fairness.

But I especially love the word “heart” in there. Because heart is what we as Liberal Democrats bring to our politics every single day.

And I want to speak to a very specific commitment in our pre manifesto that to me personifies that heart – something means a lot to me personally. And  that is our commitment to more pupil support assistants in schools.

In all my time as a parent and as a councillor working closely with my local schools, I have never heard anyone say: we have too many PSAs. We have too much support or even enough support. Quite the opposite.

PSAs support our children’s learning and our children’s wellbeing. Their job is so wide ranging that Edinburgh Council’s own job description for PSAs runs to 8 pages.

PSAs are there to support kids without additional needs, and with additional needs, and they are especially valuable for those kids who have a slightly harder time at school, for whatever reason.