Testing times lie ahead for the new pupil assessments

TESTING children to assess their progress is always divisive. Caution about the Scottish Government’s plans for standardised national testing of pupils in primary and secondary schools is understandable. If they become too high-stakes, as have SATS in the English education system, tests can distort the process of learning and teaching.

The main teachers’ union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), has said that it is deeply sceptical about minsters’ plans for the data derived from new standardised tests.

There is great sensitivity over the use of this information. The EIS warns against the “notion” that the Scottish Government will micro manage schools from Edinburgh, rather than trust the judgement of teachers.

The fear is that e create a system in which schools and their staff are judged on the basis of these results and this in turn changes the way lessons are taught.

But officials state the tests will be used to diagnose problems and identify successes. Data collected will be about national trends, not school-by-school performance.

Such use of the data is hard to dispute. It is difficult to see any problem with using test information to identify an area of the curriculum, or a part of the country where pupils are performing less well so that action can be taken to improve matters across the board.

Likewise, there is nothing obviously wrong with identifying areas that are doing better than their neighbours, in order that lessons can be disseminated and others can share in success.

The use of data is contingent on how the tests are used. Nobody would wish to see children overtested at the expense of learning, nor educators reduced to mechanical delivery of a test.

Such tests should instead provide the sort of detailed information for teachers to enable them to identify strengths and weaknesses within classrooms, rather than in individual children.

The Government has indicated that these tests are not about judging individual schools but national trends. If that is the case and the tests are not used for highstakes assessment but in a way that is reactive, flexible and diagnostic, then they will be sensible and helpful, as the EIS appears to concede.

Perhaps a greater concern at present is the number of local authorities that have existing testing regimes and therefore could test children multiple times after the standardised tests have been introduced.

This could become a serious issue, should pupils spend more time being tested – or preparing to be – than learning, and should teachers have to devote more time to administering or interpreting tests and results.

It is understandable that some councils that already have established systems do not want to give them up for something they have not yet seen.

But it is greatly to be hoped that such arrangements are transient and that the problem will cease to be an issue if the new tests can be seen as working.