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Education and Culture Committee 07 December 2015

07 Dec 2015 · S4 · Education and Culture Committee

Item of business

Education (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Constance, Angela SNP Almond Valley Watch on SPTV

With respect, Mr McArthur, I explicitly referred to that in my opening statement. However, I appreciate that it was a lengthy statement. Therefore, with the committee’s forbearance, I will repeat an aspect of what I said. We can and will develop standardised assessment that gives us the information that we need without specifying a narrow window. That is so that our children will benefit from an assessment that informs and elicits actions and improvements throughout the school year. I hope that that is clear. It might also be worth reiterating what I have said about the publication of assessment data. We will publish teacher judgment data on curriculum for excellence levels in literacy and numeracy, which are, of course, informed by standardised assessment. On your point, convener, not operating a national assessment window limits the comparability of standard assessment data, which therefore removes many of the concerns that were previously raised around the publication of information. In response to Liz Smith’s point, Craig Munro, the director of education in Fife, clearly stated to the committee his view that standardised assessment would not add to teacher workload and that the policy was very much about assessing in a better way and having more reliable and consistent information. Our view is that the new Scottish standardised assessment should streamline and replace the assessments that are currently purchased by education authorities across the country. As I indicated earlier, the cost of the implementation of standardised assessment will be borne by the Scottish Government. I turn to Mark Griffin’s substantive comments. He spoke very eloquently about the needs of our looked-after children. I am not unsympathetic to what he aspires to achieve, but the additional support needs legislation very much captures the needs of looked-after children and, as the committee may be aware, the looked-after child strategy was published in the past week to 10 days. 12:15 I remain open-minded about using the bill’s enabling powers to extend the duties to other groups of children in the future. However, I know that we all have a shared commitment on that issue. I am certainly always open to further discussion on the matter should Mr Griffin or any other member of the committee wish to pursue it further. On Mrs Scanlon’s point about participation, which the convener reiterated, the duty as drafted means that ministers and local authorities have to have regard to access. Therefore, it strengthens the current position. On setting targets for the reduction in equalities of outcome, our ambition is to close the attainment gap and not just to halve it or whatever. Members make the important point that we will need markers and milestones. The annual review process and action plans in which we will constantly review what we are doing and its effectiveness will be an important part of establishing, in due course, the appropriate markers or milestones. It is worth remembering that we do not have good, reliable baseline information on broad general education, hence our support for standardised assessment. Once the review process has been implemented and we have commented and put into action the national improvement framework, we will be in a better position to introduce meaningful milestones or markers about how we intend to reach our ambitions. I stress that we are not interested in crude, arbitrary or short-term target setting. We do not want to have targets that have a narrow focus or which could skew our view of what a good education looks like. Some of today’s proposals on targets do not sit well alongside a curriculum that focuses on the needs of each and every child to achieve their potential, no matter where that potential lies. In essence, we are taking steps to establish the national improvement framework to provide robust, consistent information about attainment that allows parents, parliamentarians and communities to monitor children’s progress with their learning and, indeed, to hold local and national Government to account.

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The Convener (Stewart Maxwell) SNP

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Education and Culture Committee’s 30th meeting in 2015. My name is Stewart Maxwell; I am a West Scotland MSP and t...

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Education and Culture Committee 07 December 2015

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