Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment - Scottish Government response: Education Secretary statement

Presiding Officer,

I am pleased to set out the Scottish Government’s next steps on qualifications reform today in response to the recommendations from the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment.

I would like to thank Professor Louise Hayward and the Independent Review Group once again for the significant care and attention undertaken in producing the final report.

When I became Cabinet Secretary last year, numerous reports were sitting on my desk, with a significant programme of reform to consider.

Ensuring that I took the right decisions for our young people, the teachers who support them and wider society, has been my primary concern throughout.

That is why I paused elements of the education reform programme. Taking the time to really listen to the views of school pupils, teachers, and parents groups alike has been critical to informing the Government’s response set out in the Independent Review.

Presiding Officer, the pandemic has changed our schools.

That context, which has been compounded by constrained public finances, cannot be ignored.

Challenges with attendance, attainment, relationships and behaviour are the reality for our schools face every day.

It is my job to recognise that – and to shape a response accordingly.   

It is clear there are a wide range of views on qualification reform.  

Some continue to call for radical changes next week, whilst others favour a more pragmatic approach, recognising the other pressures facing schools post-Covid.

For some time now, there has been an understandable focus on the Senior Phase and qualifications pathways.

We must be mindful that qualification reform is not in itself a panacea.

Our ambition to improve Scottish education must encompass high quality learning and teaching at all levels - in early years, primary and in our secondary schools across Scotland.  

Indeed, if we narrowly consider the Senior Phase of our children’s education – that being S4 to S6 – within a silo, then it will be too late in a child’s educational journey to make the necessary interventions.

To that end, I will set out a fresh national approach to educational improvement later this year.

The new plan will set out the short, medium and longer term priorities for Scottish Education, with a clear focus on excellence and equity through improvement.

Further, I believe that a new, independent, Inspectorate will have a key role to play in driving improvement.

It is essential, within that new opportunity, that the local support that is needed for schools is there – particularly given that the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education currently rests in the hands of local authorities.

To that end, a national thematic inspection on local authority approaches to school improvement is underway, with Inspectors due to visit every council in Scotland.  

This will ensure that nationally, we have a better understanding of priority areas for improvement and examples of effective support and intervention.

It will further support local authorities to address local variability, as evidenced in this year’s exam results, and enhance educational quality.

Our approach to improving education must be built on the existing commitment and professionalism of Scotland’s teachers.

That is why, over the coming weeks, I will lead a series of regional events, initially with secondary headteachers, followed by engagement with primary and early years teachers.

This will provide further opportunities to test a more focussed improvement plan for both local and national Government to support.

The evolution of Scotland’s approach to assessment in the Senior Phase will be an integral part of our wider plans to improve the curriculum.

The Curriculum Improvement Cycle is already underway – beginning with maths and numeracy. 

And this means that, for the first time there will be a systematic approach to ensuring that the curriculum in Scotland remains relevant, forward looking, clarifies the role of knowledge and ultimately supports high quality teaching, learning and progression.

Communications updating on progress with the curriculum improvement work will start later this month and I will write to the Education and Skills Committee in due course setting out further details and associated timescales for delivery in every curricular area.

Fundamentally, this approach will be underpinned by teacher expertise – subject specialists must and will lead on improving and updating Scotland’s curriculum.

Curriculum should drive qualifications, not the other way around.

That’s why the qualifications content will also be updated to ensure strong alignment between the Broad General Education and the Senior Phase.

And whilst curriculum improvement and qualifications reform are an integral part of our education reform programme, we will also see our national bodies reformed to support the changes and improvements that are required. 

The effective leadership of those bodies will be key. 

And as Parliament may be aware, a new Chair of the SQA was appointed in December of last year to lead its transition to Qualifications Scotland.

This week both the substantive Chief Inspector and the Chief Executive of Education Scotland posts were advertised on a permanent basis.

And these three organisations will play a pivotal role in curriculum improvement and qualification development. Leadership of all three will be essential in garnering trust and credibility with Scotland’s young people, teachers and parents and carers.

Presiding Officer, I agree with the report’s recommendation that the balance of assessment methods in the Senior Phase should change to have less reliance on high stakes final exams.

This means that, in the future, internal and continuous assessment will contribute to a greater percentage of a final grade.

This will support more young people to successfully evidence their learning  and it will also act to increase the resilience of our overall approach to assessment.

I want to be clear that taking steps to rebalance assessment does not mean that exams will be removed.

And, I can therefore confirm that examinations will remain part of our overall national approach, and will not be removed from all National 5 courses.

I know from direct engagement as Cabinet Secretary that many young people prefer examinations over continuous assessment.

And, as evidenced by the teacher’s survey published earlier this year, many secondary school teachers who responded support the retention of exams as a means of applying a consistent and objective standard.

There are, however, a number of practical National Courses where an exam might not be needed. So the qualifications body are currently consulting on whether or not courses such as National 5 and Higher Fashion and Technology, National 5 Practical Cookery and National 5 Practical Electronics should have an examination component.

I also support the view that the Senior Phase has, over time, become overly complex.

Now, it is right that young people are now able to choose from a wider variety of learning opportunities than previously.

However, it is also vitally important that all young people have a clear and coherent Senior Phase offer, which aligns with pathways available in both further and higher education, and into employment.

The Scottish Government therefore supports the view that a degree of rationalisation of the Senior Phase will allow us to ensure clearer pathways which are less confusing for young people.

Learning from our past experience with unit assessments and associated issues around teacher workload, we will also further explore how modularisation of graded national courses can be reintroduced, so that pupils have maximum flexibility to build credit as they progress.

With regards to Inter-disciplinary Learning, or IDL as it is known, I recognise the desire, including from some young people themselves, for IDL opportunities to be more consistently available.

It is that consistency – that parity of opportunity  - which is important And indeed, I am conscious of the recent publication by HMiE on Curriculum Design in Scotland, which stated that there remains “a lack of clarity regarding high quality IDL”.

I am therefore of the view that more work is required if IDL is to become a required part of the Senior Phase.  

A refreshed national working group, chaired by a senior secondary school leader, will therefore bring together all relevant parties already active in this space.

This group will lead a new phase of work with the objective of better determining the place of IDL in secondary schools, while ensuring an equitable, high quality offer for all young people.

This exercise will also help to expand our shared knowledge as to the ways in which IDL could be embedded into a school’s curriculum, including in respect of timetabling, while also considering accreditation.

The Scottish Government supports the principle that young people should receive recognition for their wider learning.

And we will therefore explore how best to recognise such achievement with a range of stakeholders including young people.

And in doing so, we will need to work through significant concerns which have been raised - mainly that such a step would further entrench and exacerbate social inequity.

In considering the next steps this is the principle barrier which must be addressed and overcome.

To facilitate greater recognition of wider achievement, I agree that the development of a national digital profile would benefit young people by helping them consolidate their learning.  

A profile within the My World of Work platform, managed by Skills Development Scotland, has been established and will now be further improved in conjunction with both teachers and young people.

This will ensure consistent and cost-free access to all young people in Scotland to a digital profile, a key recommendation from the report.

The central proposal from the Independent Review is that Scotland should adopt a Scottish Diploma of Achievement as a Senior Phase leaving certificate.

Whilst supportive of the development of a leaving certificate as a shared longer-term goal for Scottish education, more work is needed to determine its exact content and how it would operate. We will work with schools to consider how programmes of learning, IDL and wider achievement could be combined as a more holistic illustration of a pupil’s achievements. 

Presiding Officer, the Scottish Government is firmly of the view that teachers require more time if they are to accept a greater responsibility for formal assessment.

And with that in mind the Scottish Government remains fully committed to the delivery of our commitment to reduce class contact time by 90 minutes per week.

This is a matter which I know the Scottish Negotiating Committee is prioritising – which, members will recall is a tripartite body consisting of the teaching trade unions, COSLA and Scottish Government. It is imperative that all parties bring the necessary focus to delivery as quickly and effectively as possible – because we cannot reform our education system without giving teachers more time.

For my part, I know that there are parts of the country in which we could begin to roll out reduced class contact tomorrow. Getting an agreement on this from the SNCT is, therefore, imperative to allow us to move at pace.

Allied to this, and to help teachers focus on learning and teaching, we have launched a ‘CivTech Challenge’ which invites bids designed to reduce teacher workload, via the use of AI.   

Finally, our teachers must be the leaders of the change we need to see. Teachers must be empowered to lead the improvements within our education system.

And that is why an experienced secondary headteacher will be seconded into the qualifications body, to lead a new chapter of meaningful engagement with Scotland’s teachers.  

Presiding Officer, the actions on qualifications reform that I am setting out today seek to achieve a balance between ambition and action that is focussed, pragmatic and deliverable given the resources available to national and local government and to schools themselves. 

They build directly on the hard work, success and creativity that is already evident in every school in Scotland.   

This approach to evolving qualifications and assessment, will deliver a fairer and credible system that enhances learning and teaching, while supporting better outcomes for young people. 

But this is only one part of the improvement picture.

A much more holistic and longer-term approach, which takes account of the changes in our schools’ post pandemic, is required to drive the totality of improvements that must support better outcomes for our children and young people.