When you open the door, you are going to hear the fan and feel the heat a little bit,” warns home economics teacher June Budd.

She is leading a lesson at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh, in which three pupils are making pizza. They have made the pizza themselves from scratch and now it is time to cook it. However, 17-year-old Joe Carberry, who has been blind since birth, is reluctant. “I don’t like getting burned,” he tells his teacher.

“But I would not burn you,” she reassures him. “I don’t think I’ve ever burned a child in my class.” Through patient and gentle encouragement, Joe - who is also on the autism spectrum - is persuaded to put on oven gloves and explore them. His teacher asks him to consider their shape and texture, and how his hands fit inside.

Next, the oven’s door handle is located and a shelf is found to place the baking tray on. “Hear that, Joe? That’s the wire rack,” says Budd, giving it a shoogle and making it clatter - and finally, one homemade pizza successfully makes it into the oven.

“I put something in the oven all by myself,” says Joe happily.

“How do you feel?” asks the school’s headteacher, Elaine Brackenridge.

“Really good,” Joe replies.

Missed opportunities

Joe arrived at the Royal Blind School in Edinburgh at the beginning of this academic year after refusing to attend mainstream secondary school on and off for around one-and-a-half years. He missed most of S4, according to his mother, Michelle Carberry, who would sit with him in the car outside the building, sometimes for over an hour, trying to persuade him to go in, before ultimately having to take him home again.

Joe says his favourite subject is German. The Royal Blind School hopes he will gain a National 5 in the language. He had been removed from the German class at his former school. This was partly because, despite having good oral skills, his writing failed to keep pace with that of the other pupils. But it was also because he became increasingly anxious about leaving the base for children with additional support needs (ASN).

“Music was another thing he loved but did not get much of any more,” says Carberry. “They were gradually withdrawing him because it was easier not to have to take him into the mainstream. Plus, because his anxiety was getting worse, he didn’t really want to go.”

Too often, the Royal Blind School receives pupils like Joe when they are coming towards the end of their school education, and are at a point when mainstream has failed them, says Brackenridge. So last month, the charity that runs the school began an education campaign calling for more teachers of the visually impaired to be trained.

The Royal Blind campaign highlights that the number of pupils in Scotland with vision impairment has more than doubled, from 2,005 in 2010 to 4,331 in 2017. However, over the same period, there has been a reduction in the number of specialist teachers for children and young people with vision impairment (see figures, page 25).

Teachers out there are sometimes not being allowed to use their specialist skills, says Brackenridge, because the teacher shortage means they are either having to cover classes or they are being moved back into mainstream permanently. It is not uncommon for blind or visually impaired children to get the expert input they need to be able to learn just once a week, she adds.

“Would we be willing [as a society] to accept that a child who was not blind would be getting access to the support they needed to learn to read only once a week?” asks Brackenridge. “Of course not.”

She firmly believes mainstream teachers are doing their best to reach every child in their class. The problem is that they have big classes and often very little support.

The lack of time mainstream class teachers have is also key for the Royal Blind School’s depute head, Dominic Everett. “Time is a huge factor,” says Everett, who lost his sight when he was 16. “We have time for our kids. In the mainstream, they don’t have the time to dedicate to that young person who might be in crisis.

“There are hundreds of children who need to receive a better quality of educational provision, but we are often getting the broken kids when the local authority has tried to meet the child’s needs and the situation may have worsened.”

“Often, communication has broken down between home and school, and we are asked to come in and fix things, rather than coming in at an earlier stage and giving the child the skills and independence they need to manage in the mainstream environment.

“It’s the wrong way round. We should not be getting 16-year-old kids.”

The Royal Blind is calling for a Scottish government action plan to recruit and retain specialist teachers. It also wants “a pupil-centred placement system for young people who are vision impaired”. Brackenridge’s plea to local authorities is that they recognise that mainstream settings - while desirable for many children - will not work for all.

“We do believe in inclusion here and we believe young people should be included in their local area,” she continues. “But young people also need to be fully supported to ensure they are receiving all the tools they need to access the curriculum. That’s where we feel the angst, that’s where the conflict comes in, because there are children who want to come to our school who have been refused a place.”

Money is the main barrier, Brackenridge believes, and she says there would be a waiting list for places if the school were free. As things stand - despite the school being supported by the Scottish government and with £1 million raised by the Royal Blind charity every year - the annual fees range from £22,500 to £38,000 for a day pupil, depending on the complexity of the child’s needs, and from £40,500 to roughly £68,000 for a residential place.

Time and space

At the Royal Blind School, there are: 19 specialist teachers; 27 pupil support staff; three “habilitation” experts - who help pupils to develop independent living skills; and four nurses. Speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and occupational therapy are embedded in the curriculum.

In classes for children with complex needs, the rule of thumb is to have no more than four pupils. But in classes for those who are more academically able, staff would like to have more pupils.

Beth Laughlin is the school’s principal teacher of English. In mainstream schools, it is a constant battle to meet young people’s needs, but the Royal Blind School can do this, she argues, because staff have “the time and the space and the resource”.

“I feel a bit angry sometimes that these young people and their teachers are not getting what they need when the provision here could allow them to succeed so much more,” says Laughlin. “It would be really nice to see bigger groups.”

Stephen McCabe is the leader of Inverclyde Council, and children and young people’s spokesman for local authorities’ body Cosla. He says the needs of the child are the primary consideration for councils, in line with Getting it Right for Every Child - the national approach to supporting young people’s wellbeing - and that councils are “committed to ensuring each child receives the best educational experience, which nurtures them to achieve their full potential”.

However, he adds that it is important for local government to receive a fair financial settlement from the Scottish government in the Budget in December so that authorities can “continue to ensure that we can provide the best range of services to all of our citizens from school, to health and social care support, and beyond”.

Earlier this year, public-spending watchdog the Accounts Commission warned that Scotland’s local councils were facing “increasingly critical” holes in their budgets after their funding had been cut by almost 10 per cent in the past eight years.

The Royal Blind School has a roll of 28; in 2014 that figure was 45. The drop in numbers is partly explained by a glut of older pupils leaving, but Brackenridge says it is also due to the “presumption of mainstream” - the principle that, in recent years, has led to steep rises in the number of children with ASN attending mainstream schools.

Overall, the number of pupils in grant-aided special schools - of which there are seven in Scotland - has plummeted by more than 60 per cent, from 360 in 2005 to 135 last year, according to Scottish government figures.

Now, three of them have received another blow. In September, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry - which is investigating 86 institutions - announced that the Royal Blind School, Harmeny School for children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (in Balerno) and Donaldson’s School for children who are deaf or have communication difficulties (in Linlithgow) were among those that would be included in its investigation.

Last year, David Penman was jailed for carrying out sex attacks on eight fellow pupils when he attended the Royal Blind School in the 1980s and 1990s. Brackenridge talks of her sadness about the abuse that took place at the school, but also stresses that this was in the past.

Ultimately, she believes that, despite all the changes and tribulations that special schools have been through in recent years, their rolls will rise again. “The school is going to thrive,” she says. “I do think it will be recognised that inclusion is good and correct, but it’s not for all. Just now it’s for all [in practice], and that’s where the tension comes.”

The Royal Blind School has diversified, and last year took over running the East Lothian Visual Impairment Service (Elvis). This involves expert teachers from the school going out and supporting pupils in mainstream education (see box, opposite). Brackenridge says she would like to see “more Elvises”. She also has ambitions to create a nursery, another residence for pupils who stay at the school year-round and maybe even a college.

No ‘golden era’

Inclusion expert Professor Sheila Riddell agrees that there will always be a need for specialist institutions such as the Royal Blind School. However, Riddell, who is director of the Centre for Research in Education Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Edinburgh, also argues that the principal role of such schools should be serving children with complex needs who cannot be catered for locally.

If a child has a visual impairment and no learning difficulties, they are often “well catered for in mainstream and, if possible, should be”, she says. This not only makes financial sense but also keeps children closer to their families, and allows them to maintain local connections and spend less “dead time” in taxis. “Overall, I would not anticipate a decline in demand for special school places - but it won’t necessarily be in the grant-aided special schools,” she adds.

Riddell acknowledges that there are not enough specialist teachers of the visually impaired in mainstream schools, but believes the focus has to be on increasing that expertise by removing the financial burden associated with training, not on returning to “a mythological golden era”.

But the burning question for Brackenridge is this: where does that leave Joe, and pupils like him, who might look like they should be able to cope in mainstream settings but, ultimately, do not?

Joe is due to leave school at the end of this year, but his mother hopes he will continue at the Royal Blind School for another year because of all the education he has missed, and so that he can become more independent.

In mainstream, he was allowed to stir a pot but not use a knife, she says. And while he got mobility lessons, these were largely discontinued because his anxiety caused him to grab on to people too tightly or drop to the ground to “feel it there”, as Carberry puts it. Now habilitation lessons - where Joe is taught how to get around safely and live independently - are part of his everyday life.

When one of Joe’s fellow pupils, Andrew Pettigrew, is explaining what the Royal Blind School gives its pupils, he says it teaches them “to actually live as opposed to just get qualifications” (see box, page 23).

As for Joe, he says: “I am enjoying it. It’s the best place for me. Everything is set up the way I need it to be.”

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland

‘It’s important to learn to live, not just get qualifications’

The Scottish Book Trust headquarters is located on what is perhaps the busiest street in Edinburgh: the Royal Mile.

But last year, 17-year-old Andrew Pettigrew, who is deaf and blind, travelled to and from his work experience placement with the trust on his own.

While he was there, one of his tasks was writing tips to help authors to create well-rounded disabled characters. These included a plea to do away with clichés such as “the old blind man ‘seeing’ into the future”.

Andrew has been at the Royal Blind School for the entirety of his secondary career, having attended a mainstream primary. When we meet, he is working on a Braille Note in the library - essentially a laptop for the visually impaired.

Andrew, who achieved three As at Higher last year, is studying Higher politics and human biology, and Advanced Higher English this year. He believes he is more independent now than he would have been if he had attended a mainstream secondary. “I’ve got a few friends who go to mainstream secondaries,” he says. “I don’t think they get the right mobility and independence training.

“The focus is on academic subjects. It’s definitely important to learn to actually live as opposed to just get qualifications.”

Elvis teachers have left the building

For more than a year, the Royal Blind School has been running the East Lothian Visual Impairment Service (known as Elvis), which involves its specialist teachers going out to schools in the authority to support pupils with vision impairment.

To date, the staff have worked with 56 primary and secondary pupils.

Karen Boyd, a principal teacher at the Royal Blind School, who also works in East Lothian one day a week, believes that one of the main benefits of Elvis is the chance to intervene early, and support teachers and nursery workers to stimulate the vision that pupils do have - something that is only really possible before the age of 7.

So, for instance, Boyd has encouraged the nursery for children with complex needs at Sanderson’s Wynd Primary in Tranent to introduce a dark room so that light can be used to stimulate the children’s vision.

“A lot of the time, an assumption is made that a child just has no vision but, in the right environment, it can be that they are able to use vision,” says Boyd. “That can lead to them being able to find something on the floor. That’s massive, because then they are more likely to search and explore.”