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The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 boosted the rights of parents of children with additional support needs (ASN) by improving access to information, instituting a Code of Practice and establishing new redress mechanisms such as the ASN Tribunal and independent mediation. More than a decade later, Scottish legislation enacted in 2016 and implemented in 2018 attempted to increase children's rights, broadly placing them on a par with those of parents and young people. This paper draws on data from an ESRC project entitled Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1). Analysis of Scottish Government policy and legislation, key informant interviews and official statistics are used to examine the extent to which the new rights are likely to be realised in practice, given the complexity of the legislation and competition between discourses of needs, broadly synonymous with the wellbeing agenda and rights. The paper concludes with a discussion of the lessons which may be learnt from the Scottish experience, which will be of interest to an international audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the first, completed phase of a research project on inspection as governing in three European inspection systems. The data presented here draw attention to the rather under-researched associational activities of European inspectorates and their developing practices of policy learning and exchange, and highlight their significance as contributing to an emergent European Education Policy Space (EEPS). The paper is framed by original approaches to inspection that locate it as a set of governing practices, connected to changing governing forms and the growth of networks of relationships and flows of data across Europe. Comparisons are drawn between the relationships with Europe of inspectorates in Scotland, Sweden and England, drawing on Jacobsson's conceptualisation of regulative, inquisitive and meditative governance as a framing device. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]