Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools minutes: September 2024

Attendees and apologies

Attendees

• Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills (Chair)
• COSLA Spokesperson on Children and Young People
• Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES)
• Association of Head Teachers and Deputes Scotland (AHDS)
• Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists (ASPEP)
• COSLA
• Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS)
• Education Scotland
• General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS)
• NASUWT
• respectme
• Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA)
• UNISON
• Support and Wellbeing Unit, Scottish Government (Secretariat) 

Apologies

• Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE)
• School Leaders Scotland (SLS)

 

Items and actions

Welcome, introductions and minutes from previous meeting

The chair welcomed attendees and noted apologies.

The minutes from the previous meeting, held on 15 May 2024, were issued for information. These were agreed via email at the time and have been published on the Scottish Government (SG) website.

Update on publication of relationships and behaviour action plan and mobile phone guidance.

The Chair updated SAGRABIS that the announcement of the UK Parliamentary election had delayed the planned publication of the mobiles guidance and relationships and behaviour action plan until the new school year. These publications had been launched on 15 August at Stonelaw High school in Rutherglen attended by both the Cabinet Secretary and COSLA Spokesperson for Children and Young People.

Role of SAGRABIS in implementing and monitoring the relationships and behaviour action plan

A draft of the activity tracker had been circulated in advance of the meeting. SAGRABIS agreed that this be circulated at every meeting, but that discussions at SAGRABIS should focus on areas where the expertise of SAGRABIS was required, or to draw attention to areas where progress was at risk. The Secretariat would contact action owners in advance of every meeting to update the tracker.

The Secretariat gave an update on the implementation of the action plan and proposed that the delivery of work will be taken forward on a case-by-case basis by a combination of SAGRABIS, sub-groups of SAGRABIS, groups involving wider membership, and the Headteacher Taskforce. It was confirmed that SAGRABIS remained as the overall decision-making body, and therefore would continue to act as an overall advisory group for pieces of work led by other structures, with the plans/outputs brought back to SAGRABIS for feedback and approval at appropriate points.

SAGRABIS agreed that the scale of the action plan would require an agile approach to progressing the recommendations. It agreed for other structures to be utilised provided SAGRABIS retained oversight of the plan and outputs from the actions. To ensure transparency of the head teachers taskforce, it was suggested a similar approach to the OECD Teacher Forum be adopted. It was also suggested that membership of sub-groups should include representatives of different interests within education, for example support staff as well as teachers.

It was suggested further work was required on the RAG status of the activity tracker in order to provide further clarity as to whether the action is on target or at risk.

Some members of SAGRABIS had begun to take forward their actions, or to identify where they may be able to make a contribution. The Secretariat would engage with all members of SAGRABIS to identify owners for every action, as well as contributory organisations. The definition of violence, consequences, staged intervention model and risk assessments were initial priorities within the plan.

Clarity was sought on how the £900,000 funding to support training and development of support staff had been spent locally. ADES offered to seek feedback from its members.

Action: Scottish Government to explore the potential to adopt the OECD Teacher Forum model.

Action: Scottish Government to review the RAG categories in the tracker to ensure sufficient clarity and risk status.

Action: Scottish Government to formally request an update from ADES on the breakdown of the £900k spend on support staff training. 

Action: Scottish Government to add violence to the agenda for the next meeting in November.

Membership of SAGRABIS

The action tracker contained an action (action 20.1) to review the membership and Terms of Reference of SAGRABIS to ensure the composition represents the multi-agency nature of the response required.

SAGRABIS confirmed the membership as listed in the Terms of Reference remained relevant, subject to updates being made to parental representative, including SCDE and identifying a new representative from VOICE.

The group then had a further discussion around and additional members who should be invited to join SAGRABIS.

It was agreed that in order to reflect the range of sectors with a role in implementing the action plan, there would be benefit in bringing in new members. SAGRABIS members were keen to ensure the size of the group remained manageable, and emphasised the need for new members to be delivery-focused or advocacy organisations. It was agreed consideration should be given to inviting members who could represent interests from justice, health, care experience, children and young people and early learning and childcare.

Action: Cabinet Secretary and COSLA Spokesperson for Children and Young People to agree proposals for new members of SAGRABIS.

Action: Secretariat to update Terms of Reference with new membership once finalised.

Next steps/AOB

Education Scotland informed SAGRABIS of a forthcoming event being held on 27 November ‘Children, classrooms and challenging behaviour: do the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the few?’. Secretariat agreed to circulate information to the group. To note – this event has not been endorsed by SAGRABIS.

It was highlighted that Anti-Bullying Week takes place the week 11-15 November, and would align with the publication of updated national anti-bullying guidance and a new respectme website.

The Cabinet Secretary expressed her thanks to the members of the Health and Wellbeing team for their hard work producing the action plan.

The next meeting will take place on Thursday 28th November.

Action: Secretariat to circulate details of ‘Children, classrooms and challenging behaviour: do the rights of the many outweigh the rights of the few?’.

No other business was raised. The chair closed the meeting.