Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill: AHDS response

Background

Labour MSP, Daniel Johnson, introduced this Bill in March 2025.   His Bill is in response to views that seclusion and restraint are used too often in schools, that recording of use is inadequate and that parents must be timeously informed if their child is subject to either seclusion or restraint. 

As part of the Stage 1 of the legislative process, the Education and Skills Committee issued a call for views about the Bill, seeking responses by 11 July.  Following their consideration of responses, there will be a debate and vote in Parliament which will determine whether or not the Bill will proceed to the next stage.

All information about the Bill and its progress can be found here. 

https://www.parliament.scot/bills-and-laws/bills/s6/restraint-and-seclusion-in-schools-scotland-bill 

Two key parts of this information are the text of the Bill itself and the Policy Memorandum which explains the rationale for the Bill and what it is seeking to achieve.  

The AHDS response to this consultation is replicated in full below.

Committee questions and AHDS response as submitted

1. Do you agree with the Bill's approach? Why?

The Bill creates duties in relation to the use of restraint and seclusion in schools.  

The Scottish Government would need to issue statutory guidance to education providers about the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. Education providers would have to consider this guidance when developing or changing policies. 

AHDS response:

“Little time has elapsed since the publishing of the non-statutory guidance “Included Engaged Involved Part 3”.  Time is required for local authorities to update local policies to take account of that guidance and there are a number of points which need greater clarity in that local guidance to enable local implementation. 

Seeking to make this Statutory Guidance at this stage, and to add further requirements, seems premature. 

Given this guidance is now being considered and responded to by the system, taking account of local structures/staffing/linked policies, it would seem more appropriate to allow this to bed in and then to assess whether there is a need for statutory guidance.  At present, this would appear to be an unnecessary use of Parliamentary time.”

2.  Do you think the timescale for informing parents is reasonable?

If the Bill is passed, schools would need to inform the parent of a child or young person subjected to restraint or seclusion about the incident and to provide details of it. This would need to be done as soon as possible, and no later than 24 hours after the occurrence of the incident. 

AHDS response:

“No.  The definition set out in the draft Bill is so expansive such that it would include situations which need not be reported to parents (as it is common in schools to take a child to another part of the school to manage behaviour or reflect on a situation – this would be considered to be seclusion under the current definition and would frequently be wholly unnecessary to report to parents.) 

Further, if introduced, this short timeframe for notifying parents may result in inadvertent breaches, particularly in relation to relevant situations at the end of the school week or school term. Incidents need to be investigated so that school leaders fully understand events before relating them to parents – these issues are often complex and multi-faceted.  Instead, a more reasonable timescale would be “as soon as possible after investigation, normally by the end of the next working day”.

3. Do you agree all incidents of restraint or seclusion in schools should be recorded, collated and reported to Parliament annually?

If the Bill is passed, education providers must record all incidents of restraint or seclusion in their schools. This data must be collated and reported to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government, in turn, must report to Parliament on this data at the end of each year. 

AHDS response:

“AHDS has considerable concern about the unnecessary bureaucratic demands this would create due to the expansive definition of seclusion and restrain. We would have no objection to the collation of this data when it related to significant events and was used to inform appropriate policy responses locally and nationally. 

The bald figures would offer very little information about whether seclusion or restraint were required in each situation or about the severity of different situations (as the definition is so broad). 

Without a change to the definition we could not support the collection of such statistics.  Used crudely, those statistics would provide a short-cut to compare local authorities or schools and to place them into league tables for seclusion and restraint. Doing so may be appealing to create a simple picture but it is much more complex than that.  If a school is inadequately resourced or if a pupil is placed in an inappropriate setting, sadly, there is an increased likelihood that restraint or seclusion will be employed. The risk then is that there is high level political criticism of the use of seclusion and restraint falling on staff teams who have not been given the tools to enable them to work in the ways in which all in the profession would wish to. 

There will always be the need for seclusion and restraint but it should be a course of last resort, for example in situations where a pupil is presenting a risk to themselves or others. The absence of adequate resources creates the conditions for increased use and shorter pathways to that last resort.

So, while AHDS is supportive of evidence informed policy making (and understand that the intended purpose of this element of the Bill is to do just that), we are concerned about how it may be used over time. Politically expedient use of these statistics without reference to, or cognisance of, underlying situations and factors would be deeply unhelpful.” 

4. What do you think about maintaining a list of training providers on the use of restraint and seclusion in schools?

If the Bill is passed, the Scottish Government must maintain a list of training providers on the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. This should also include details of courses or programmes of such training.  

AHDS response:

“AHDS has no objection to the creation of such a list to inform local authority decisions about engagement of such trainers. 

However, this should not imply any expectation that mainstream school leaders or members of their staff team should be expected to undertake such training or that restraint of children is part of their job as a teacher. The appropriate response when a child has such a level of need is for an alternative, appropriate, placement with appropriately trained staff should be found.

AHDS supports all staff being trained to use recognised de-escalation techniques and self-regulation strategies.”

5. Any other comments?  

AHDS response:

”AHDS does not support this guidance being made statutory.  Further, the definition of seclusion and restraint in the non-statutory guidance (and used for this draft Bill) is too expansive and risks interpretations which would create unsustainable bureaucratic demands and appear to cut across wholly normal and non-contentious techniques used to respond to specific incidents and help to support children to learn and grow as part of their school experience.

Finally, AHDS contends that the estimated £3.3m per annum required to deliver this Bill would be much better utilised contributing to the resource required to address the chronic underfunding of ASN as identified in the recent Audit Scotland report.”

END.