Co-ordinated Support Plans and the ASL Act 2004: What Home Educators in Scotland Need to Know

Scotland's system for supporting children with additional needs in education is governed by a dedicated piece of legislation: the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, commonly called the ASL Act. If your child has identified Additional Support Needs — or has a Co-ordinated Support Plan — this Act creates specific rights and obligations that shape what happens when you choose to home educate. Understanding these before you apply for withdrawal consent will save you significant confusion.

What the ASL Act 2004 Actually Does

The ASL Act established a statutory framework for identifying, assessing, and supporting children with additional support needs in Scottish schools. Its scope is broader than England's SEN system: ASN under the 2004 Act includes learning difficulties, physical or sensory impairments, autism, ADHD, mental health conditions, English as an additional language, family disruption, and any other factor that means a child is unlikely to benefit from school education without additional support.

Under the Act, local authorities have three core duties:

1. To identify children who have ASN
2. To assess the nature and extent of those needs
3. To provide support to address them

These duties are fulfilled through school enrolment. The school is the operational unit through which the council meets its ASN obligations. This is the central fact that determines everything else about how the ASL Act intersects with home education.

The Three Tiers of ASN Documentation

The 2004 Act created a tiered documentation framework. Understanding which tier your child sits in matters for home education planning.

No formal document. Many children with ASN are supported through informal classroom adjustments, differentiated teaching, and school-level plans that have no statutory standing. These are school decisions, not legal documents. They vanish entirely at withdrawal and have no bearing on the consent process.

Individualised Education Programme (IEP). An IEP is a school-level plan created by the school to coordinate support for a child with identified ASN. It is not a statutory document under the ASL Act — it has no legal force beyond the school that created it. It is not appealable. When you withdraw, it ceases.

Co-ordinated Support Plan (CSP). The CSP is the only statutory ASN document under the 2004 Act. It is used for children with complex, enduring needs that involve two or more agencies (typically education plus health, or education plus social work) and are likely to last for more than a year. The CSP creates enforceable obligations on the council. It is the only ASN document that parents can appeal to the Additional Support Needs Tribunals for Scotland (ASNTS).

If your child has a CSP, the home education process is more involved. If they have an IEP or informal support only, the ASL Act creates no additional procedural barriers.

What the ASL Act Does and Does Not Require at Withdrawal

The ASL Act does not create any restriction on a parent's right to home educate. The right to withdraw a child from school is governed by Section 35 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, not by the ASL Act.

What the ASL Act does do is establish that the council's duty to provide ASN support operates through school enrolment. When you withdraw, the educational ASN support structure dissolves. The council does not have a continuing statutory duty to fund or coordinate specialist support for home-educated children under the ASL Act.

However, two specific rights under the 2004 Act survive withdrawal:

The right to request an ASN assessment. Under Section 2 of the ASL Act, parents can request at any time that the authority assess whether their child has additional support needs. The authority must consider this request even after the child has been withdrawn from school. In practice, councils rarely provide substantive support following a post-withdrawal assessment, but the formal right exists.

The right to information and advice. The council must provide parents with information about ASN support. Independent advocacy services funded under the Act — such as Enquire (Scotland's ASN helpline) — remain accessible to home-educating families.

If Your Child Has a CSP: The Multi-Agency Meeting

When a child with a Co-ordinated Support Plan applies for withdrawal, Scottish Government guidance advises the local authority to convene a multi-agency meeting before granting consent. The purpose is to ensure all the agencies currently named in the CSP — education, health, social work, wherever applicable — understand that the child is leaving the school system and can discuss the implications for their respective involvement.

This meeting is advisory. It does not give the council additional grounds to refuse consent. Your right to home educate is not conditional on the outcome of the meeting. What it does mean in practice:

• The consent process will take longer than the standard six-week timeline
• You may be asked to attend or participate in the meeting
• Agencies other than the education authority may contact you to discuss ongoing service delivery
• The CSP itself will need to be reviewed or ceased, since it is built around school-based multi-agency provision that no longer exists once you withdraw

After withdrawal, a CSP cannot be maintained in its current form because the school provision it coordinates is gone. The authority will typically close the CSP. If your child continues to receive NHS services, those are documented separately through the health system.

Requesting a CSP After Withdrawal: Is This Possible?

In theory, the right to request an ASN assessment under Section 2 of the ASL Act means a parent could request a CSP be created or maintained for a home-educated child. In practice, the threshold for a CSP is that the child's complex needs are being addressed through school-based multi-agency coordination. Since home education removes the school element, the conditions for a CSP are generally not met post-withdrawal.

If you are specifically seeking multi-agency coordination of your home-educated child's support — for example, because NHS, social work, and your own education provision all need to be aligned — the appropriate route is typically to request a Child's Plan meeting through the Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) framework, which operates outside the education system and applies to all children in Scotland regardless of school enrolment.

The Practical Impact on Home Education Planning

The ASL Act shapes home education planning in three concrete ways:

Budget for specialist services. Once you withdraw, school-delivered specialist support ends. Services that were previously funded through the education authority — educational psychology assessments, specialist teacher input, structured literacy programmes — become things you source and pay for yourself. NHS therapy continues, but education-funded provision does not.

Carry over useful information, not the documents. Your child's IEP and school-based ASN records are useful background reading before you start home educating. They are not documents you need to maintain or reproduce. Use them to understand your child's profile, not as a template for your home provision.

Design around your child's actual needs. The ASL Act's framework is built around institutional provision. Home education gives you the flexibility to design something genuinely suited to your child — not a school-at-home replication, but an approach that takes their specific sensory, cognitive, and emotional profile seriously. Scotland's home education law gives you that latitude.

The Scotland Legal Withdrawal Blueprint includes specific guidance for families navigating withdrawal when a CSP or formal ASN identification is in place — including what to include in your consent application and how to handle the multi-agency meeting if one is convened.

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