How Scotland’s Inclusion Ambassadors helped transform support for learning

Children in Scotland report highlights how Inclusion Ambassadors have shaped policy through lived experience and children’s rights. Reflections from 2020–2026 show progress, challenges and a clear call to keep young people’s voices at the centre of decision‑making.

The Inclusion Ambassadors are a group of young people who are entitled to additional support for learning. The group exists to ensure that the voices, views and experiences of young people with additional support needs are heard in decisions about education policy. The group has been supported by Children in Scotland since 2019.

The project is grounded in a children’s rights‑based approach. In particular, it reflects the right of all children and young people to express their views on matters that affect them, and for those views to be given due weight, as set out in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In 2020, the Scottish Government published the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan, developed in response to the findings of Angela Morgan’s Review of Additional Support for Learning. The Action Plan set out a national programme of work to address the issues identified in the review and to strengthen the delivery of additional support for learning across Scotland.

A central commitment within the Action Plan was to improve how children and young people are involved in decisions that affect their education.

The Inclusion Ambassadors project was explicitly referenced within the Action Plan as a mechanism for supporting the participation of children and young people with additional support needs at a national level. Through this, the project was recognised as playing an important role in ensuring that the lived experiences of children and young people help to inform policy development, implementation and review in relation to additional support for learning.

As the Action Plan reached completion, Children in Scotland have reflected on the contribution of the Inclusion Ambassadors project over this period, as well as the wider ongoing development of the project across that time period.

This is a robust report, bringing together learning from across the project’s different workstreams between 2020 and March 2026. It reflects on progress made, challenges encountered and what children and young people’s experiences tell us about additional support for learning in Scotland.

The report concludes that by continuing to listen to, learn from and act on children and young people’s views, Scotland can strengthen additional support for learning in ways that are grounded in lived experience and children’s rights.

To read the full report, click here.