National Standardised Assessment - Assessment Construct and Pupil Report: FOI release

Information requested

Requesting information relating to the current Assessment Construct documentation, and examples of SNSA reports produced at the individual pupil and school level.

Response

With regard to the first part of your request, seeking Assessment Construct documentation, please find attached the nearest equivalent document produced by the current National Standardised Assessments for Scotland supplier, AlphaPlus Ltd, entitled "NSA-00064-CDS-SNSA assessment design". The current platform followed on from the phase one ACER platform, therefore exactly equivalent documentation does not exist.

Further, in relation to the second part of your request, please find attached examples of an Individual Learner Report, and the school level Group Diagnostic Report and Group Aggregate Report. Please note that in order to comply with data protection legislation, the data which has been used to produce the exemplar reports is operational synthetic testing data, and is not representative of real learner data.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because a number of exemptions apply.

An exemption, subject to the public interest test, under section (section 33(1)(b)) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested. This exemption applies where disclosure of information would (or would be likely to) prejudice substantially the commercial interests of any person or organisation. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption. We recognise that there could be some public interest in release because the assessments in question must be seen to be designed in a way that is fair and representative of individual learners’ outcomes. We believe, however, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring value for the public purse. Releasing further information on our supplier’s unique product would we believe be prejudicial to the supplier by releasing information that is of significant commercial and trade value to them. As well as the potential costs of legal action, releasing information of this sort would likely dissuade current and future suppliers from providing assessments for the Scottish Government, or significantly increasing the cost of providing those assessments in order to offset the potential loss of the commercial value of their product.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA also applies to this information. This exemption applies to the fair processing of personal data of third parties, and applies in respect of personal email addresses and names of junior officials at the Scottish Government. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202300391122 - Information Released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

998.7 kB