Shake-up on education ‘may spell end of exams’
Warning over impact of SNP reforms after track record of failure
AN SNP education shake-up could spell the end of ‘exams as we know them’, it was warned yesterday.
Reform of exams and assessments will take place – but it could be 2024 before a new system is designed.
A government adviser previously proposed scrapping National 5s but teaching unions wanted more sweeping changes.
Scottish Education Secretary ShirleyAnne Somerville said external marking would remain in place and exams would not be scrapped.
But there was concern yesterday over the plans and the ability of the SNP to steer the reforms after 14 years of education failure. The Tories fear ministers will cave in to demands for harder-line reforms for scrapping exams.
Scottish Tory education spokesman Oliver Mundell said the ‘only plans the SNP have got is to double down on radical and ill thought-out reform that will end exams as we know them’.
He asked: ‘Why should they trust the SNP to fix Scottish schools when it is this Government that got us into this mess?’
Miss Somerville announced in August the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) will be scrapped and replaced, while failing quango Education Scotland will see its powers of inspection removed. But there will be no further action until early next year after a consultation.
Labour education spokesman Michael Marra accused Miss Somerville of being ‘content to leave the SQA – unfit in its current form, as the Cabinet Secretary agrees – presiding over our assessment process this year and potentially beyond’.
A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has backed the aims of the SNP’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) but outlined criticism, including concerns about teachers teaching ‘to the test’.
A separate report by Professor Gordon Stobart for the OECD has said that National 5 exams should be scrapped in favour of a graduation diploma with more tests carried out online.
Yesterday, it was announced that Professor Louise Hayward of Glasgow University will lead a group to work on the changes, which will not affect next year’s exam diet.
Miss Somerville said: ‘I am convinced that, given the experience and views expressed over the last two years, the time is right to signal that the Scottish Government supports reform of national qualifications and assessment.
‘The Scottish Government will consult on the purpose and principles which should underpin any reform of national qualifications and assessments. This will be the first step in a process which will be done with careful thought and consideration, recognising the importance of national qualifications to learners.’
She said the group led by Professor Hayward, which will begin its work in the new year, will help to ‘provide advice to Scottish ministers as to how agreed principles will be translated into a design for delivering assessment and qualifications while ensuring that externally assessed examination will remain part of the new system’.
In his report, Professor Stobart listed six options for reform of assessments and qualifications.
As well as ‘de-cluttering’ S4 and S5 assessment by possibly scrapping National 5 exams, options
‘This Government got us into this mess’ ‘Woefully inadequate’
included an S4-S6 qualification system combining teacher assessment and exams.
Last night, general secretary of the EIS teaching union Larry Flanagan said: ‘The EIS believes that the proposed timescale around the introduction of a new qualification framework is woefully inadequate.
‘This is an urgent problem highlighted by the pandemic where the clear inequity of the previous high-stakes exam approach was exposed for all to see.’
Commenting on the Holyrood announcement and debate yesterday, education expert Professor Lindsay Paterson, of Edinburgh University, said: ‘What strikes me is the depressingly partisan nature – or, from the Government side, the depressingly uncritical nature – of the non-debate.
‘No one had a single criticism to make of the two OECD reports [the initial one and Professor Stobart’s report], which, in my view, are wholly inadequate.’