HIGHLAND has been unable to recruit two educational psychologists to its new community schools initiative because of the national shortage, the council’s education committee heard last week.
Donnie MacDonald, head of education, said salaries had fallen behind those of teachers and forensic psychology was now more financially attractive.
“In 10 years’ time, our educational psychology staff will fall from 16.7 to one through retirals. We have started a training programme for teachers who have already done psychology-related subjects in their degrees and this could enable us to grow our own psychologists,” Mr MacDonald said.
The recruitment shortage would affect provision for pupils with special educational needs, which was already stretched by the increasing trend towards mainstream education. Council spending on SEN, Mr MacDonald said, had almost doubled over the past four years to pound;15 million.
Mr MacDonald said improvements were needed in access to buildings and in differentiated curricula for individual pupils. “Some of the expenditure increases have been down to a better identification of SEN, and autism, for example, appears to be higher in the Highlands than in other areas. There are also a significant number of deaf-blind children.”
Bruce Robertson, education director, said 10 per cent of pupils in Highland have needs of some sort, ranging from those in hospital to very gifted pupils.
“The current policy is to include these pupils at their local schools as far as possible. In a large rural authority such as Highland, the delivery of this provision will be complex and expensive, and the true costs of an inclusive educational needs policy are significant. We need an urgent review of grant-aided expenditure,” Mr Robertson stated.
