Pupils graded for happiness NOT just on exam results
PUPILS will be graded on their happiness and confidence rather than solely on their exam performance under plans for a major schooling shake-up.
Education chiefs said testing children on their academic ability should be seen in the same light as other ventures, such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award and volunteering.
Carrie Lindsay, president of the Association of Directors of Education, the network representing councils on schooling, said it had been challenging to find a consistent and accurate measurement of happiness, confidence and contentment among pupils.
But she claimed ‘we do need something at a school level, and a classroom level, so that people can start to interrogate that kind of data alongside the progress people are making alongside their academic attainment’.
Last night Scottish Tory education spokesman Oliver Mundell said: ‘This appears to be another misguided step towards removing traditional exams from the education system. This won’t provide any true insight into what they know and what they can do. Continuing this move towards scrapping exams must be stopped by the SNP.
‘They have already presided over chaos in our exam system during the pandemic. Now, with every measure proposed, they seem determined to get rid of them altogether.’
The plan to assess pupils on their happiness was unveiled at the virtual Scottish Learning Festival. Scotland’s public spending watchdog criticised a lack of data to gauge children’s true experience of school.
Stephen Boyle, Scotland’s auditor general, said the criteria for measuring success must be widened as he suggested that the pandemic may have offered a glimpse of a future with limited testing.
Speaking at the event on Tuesday, Mr Boyle said: ‘It feels like a really pivotal moment for education with teacher-led assessments forming the basis of exam results over the past two cycles.
‘There is a potential application for the education system to reach those teacher-led judgments on other facets of Curriculum for Excellence.
‘With the right accountability and the right assurance model, that can be tested and it might also move the conversation beyond the place where “schools are all about exams”.’
The Mail reported earlier this week the attainment gap between state and private schools has widened, leaving the poorest pupils to ‘pay the price of the Government’s failure’. Opposition parties attacked SNP ministers in the wake of figures showing pupils at private schools were much more likely to get top marks.
In these schools, 75.6 per cent of pupils sitting Highers this year were awarded an A grade, up from 67 per cent the previous year, according to figures from the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). However, this result was only achieved by 45.6 per cent of those sitting Higher exams at state schools, up from 38 per cent. This means the attainment gap between state and private schools grew from 29 per cent to 30 per cent between 2020 and 2021.
Education commentator and former headteacher Cameron Wyllie said: ‘It is just possible that, with some imagination, all this chaos, which has meant so much unpaid extra work for teachers, could lead to some new thinking, particularly as colleagues line up to bury the SQA, and not to praise it.’
‘Won’t provide true insight’