‘It’s time for ministers to listen. Tests are not the way to learn’

Testing is no way to be commencing the formal education of our children. The fact that the Scottish Government have lost the vote on P1 testing means they must look at the issue again.

I would expect them to review their position, and hope they don’t dig their heels in and just plough on in the way they have been doing. That would cause concern for children, parents and teachers.

The fact is, the debate around P1 tests has been a costly distraction. The bigger discussion we need to be having is: What is the best way for children up to the age of seven to learn?

If we look at other countries that outperform Scotland in education, they do not start formal schooling for children until the age of six and in some cases seven. We have to ask ourselves why. To me the answer is quite obvious: these countries put a lot of time and resources into kindergarten-style, play-based learning and trust that it will pay dividends for children in their later years.

This approach does not just help in terms of their attainment – it also helps in terms of their mental health and resilience throughout the rest of their childhood and into adolescence.

Play-based learning is not just letting children do what they want. Teachers need to be trained and confident, allowing pupils to follow their interests and pick up literacy and numeracy skills at the same time.

Despite everything that has been going on, some schools in Scotland – to their credit – do base their pupils’ learning on play in P1 and sometimes P2. But it takes confidence.

We know the Scottish Government get the message that our children mainly learn through play in their early years – but their keenness to close the attainment gap is blinding them.

They introduced P1 testing as a way of gathering data on children at the earliest age – and they’ve forgotten the research that tells you that teachers will just teach to the tests. In most schools, play-based learning loses out.

It is time for ministers to listen: play-based learning is the best way of creating a level playing field for our children in the earliest years, not tests.

Tam Baillie was the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland from 2009-2017