Hansard

I appreciate that there are particular challenges for rural communities and especially ones with small schools. I discussed that last summer when I attended the first ever islands education summit. We are working closely with partners on how we roll out our commitment to ensuring that, by 2018, all new headteachers possess the headship qualification. Being a headteacher is a professionally and personally demanding role, and we must ensure that all headteachers are supported to achieve the very best in that post, because all the evidence shows us that that is necessary if our children are also to achieve their best.

We have established the Scottish College for Educational Leadership, committed £4 million over the past three years to supporting masters level learning for teachers and created partnerships between universities and local authorities to improve teachers’ experiences in the early part of their careers and provide high-quality learning opportunities for experienced teachers. We are also taking steps to require all new headteachers to be qualified before appointment, as I outlined to Mr Scott.

We are in a good place. However, the OECD’s recommendations give a clear sense of the steps that we can take to improve our system further, specifically to close the attainment gap and deliver excellence and equity in education for all. They include the need to ensure an approach to improving equity that is based on what is known to work well; to strengthen the professional leadership of curriculum for excellence locally; to simplify and clarify core guidance on curriculum for excellence; to further support strong relationships between schools and the wider communities that they serve; and to develop an integrated framework for assessment and evaluation that encompasses all system levels.

The OECD report states that

“CfE is at a ‘watershed’ moment”

and suggests that what is needed now is

“a bold approach that moves beyond system management in recognition of a new dynamic and energy ... generated nearer to teaching and learning.”

I whole-heartedly agree, which is why, after three months of extensive consultation with thousands of teachers, parents, educationists and—crucially—children and young people, we launched the national improvement framework last week. The framework is based on four key priorities for education: raising attainment; closing the attainment gap; improving health and wellbeing; and improving employability. The framework is broad and comprehensive and sets out measures for school improvement, school leadership, supporting teachers and engaging parents.

I want to be clear that our faith in the expertise and judgment of teachers is central in assessing pupil progress and in the continuation of the curriculum for excellence assessment framework. That approach will support an understanding of what works and will therefore enable rapid and significant improvement.

Teacher judgment lies at the heart of the system. From 2017, following pilots later this year, teacher judgment will be informed by a system of new national standardised assessment at primaries 1, 4 and 7 and at secondary 3, which will help teachers and parents to make better, more objective and more consistent judgments about children’s progress towards the different curriculum levels. That teacher judgment data, underpinned by the new assessments, will be collected and published nationally each year to give us, for the first time, a clear and consistent picture of how children and young people are progressing in their learning.

The national improvement framework creates a system that strikes the right balance between supporting the development of children and providing information and accountability about national and local performance. Teachers will be able to use the new assessments during the school year to help to inform their judgments about children and action to support those children. Assessment must be used in a way that not only informs but elicits timely action to improve outcomes for children.

For parents, that will mean clear and meaningful information on their child’s progress that is consistently presented, no matter where they are in the country. For teachers, local authorities and community planning partnerships, it will mean better data for identifying areas for improvement. For the Scottish Government, it will mean that we have clear information to guide national policy. Crucially, it will mean that everyone gets enough information, early enough in children’s education, to pinpoint issues—for individuals, schools, local areas and at a national level—and address them with the right support at the right time.

We can be rightly proud of the success that our education system delivers for most of our children, as evaluated and reported on by a thorough and independent team of experts at the OECD. Those experts have broadly endorsed our approach and given us 12 recommendations for action in areas in which we can make further improvements. In particular, they concluded that we have a great opportunity to lead the world in developing an integrated assessment and evaluation framework. That is what our new national improvement framework is designed to achieve.

However, we must not lose sight of the fact that success is elusive for some children—particularly those from deprived communities. The gap in attainment is narrowing but, if we are to achieve our ambition of delivering a world-class education system for all our children, we must and will do more. The Government has already started work on taking forward the OECD report’s recommendations with vigour and energy. We are considering how to capitalise on the watershed moment that has been identified for curriculum for excellence. We have launched the national improvement framework and are now very much focused on its implementation.

We have put education at the heart of our agenda so that we can create a system that is focused on attainment and achievement and built around delivering equity and excellence and, crucially, aspiration and ambition—in other words, a world-class education system.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the OECD’s review of Scottish education, published on 15 December 2015; welcomes the findings of the review that much in the curriculum for excellence is positive, including the holistic approach, the four capacities, professional engagement, trust in teachers’ professional judgement and enthusiasm for learning and teaching; agrees that it paints a picture of a successful and effective school system, but one in which there are important areas for improvement; acknowledges the recognition of the Scottish Government’s determination to focus on achieving both excellence and equity in the education system; supports work to make the framework of the curriculum for excellence simpler for teachers, parents and carers, reducing bureaucracy and supporting a new sense of dynamism and energy; agrees with the OECD that the National Improvement Framework has the potential to provide a robust evidence base and that it will be a key means of driving work to close the attainment gap and strengthen formative assessment approaches; further agrees that Scotland has an opportunity to become a world leader in providing an integrated framework for evaluation and assessment, and believes that action taken as a result of this report will help to reach the Scottish Government’s goal of an excellent and equitable education system in which every young person across the country is able to achieve their full potential regardless of their family circumstances or the background that they are born into.