Hansard

For those of us who are not experts, the OECD report can be a challenging read at times. It is positive about Scotland’s achievements to date and the potential for Scotland to be a world leader in education. It describes the curriculum for excellence as being at a watershed moment and says that 10 solid years of patient work has taken place, which has presented us with the opportunity to move the agenda on to a new phase

“beyond system management in a new dynamic nearer to teaching and learning”.

The report says that we need to strengthen what it calls the middle area, which involves networking and collaboration. I take that to mean that we need more engagement among professionals up and down the country, and among education authorities, so that we can truly bring about the improvements that we need and begin to close the various gaps that concern us. Principal among those is the attainment gap, but I hope that we can also do something about the opportunity gaps that exist in the system.

The report acknowledges a number of improvements and particularly mentions Scotland’s

“above international averages in science and reading”.

It says that our achievement levels are spread fairly equally, that a high number of students from the lowest socioeconomic status groups perform in the top quarter of international achievers, that our schools are inclusive and that there are clear upward trends in attainment. Of our school leavers, 90 per cent are entering a positive destination, and such levels have been continuously improving in recent years.

Improvements are also noted in relation to pupils’ positive attitudes towards their schools and teachers. There has been a welcome drop in negative behaviour such as smoking, alcohol abuse and general disruptive behaviour. They are all on the decline, thankfully.

There is evidence of an improving picture of current performance in a number of areas. A higher number of our young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting better qualifications, and almost double the number we saw in 2007 are getting at least one higher. We have record exam results, with numbers of passes in highers and advanced highers rising, and we have the highest number of youngsters ever applying to go to university, with a huge 50 per cent increase in the number of those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

More needs to be done, of course, but good progress is being made. What then lies beyond the watershed that the report says that we are at?

At the heart of this, according to my understanding, is how we assess and evaluate and how that leads us towards improvement. The report applauds our teachers for their ingenuity in devising a variety of methods to collect information but says that there is

“concern that insufficient use is made of assessment information to support children’s learning progress and curriculum development”

and that too many teachers are still

“unclear what should be assessed in relation to the Experiences and Outcomes”,

all of which serves to blur

“the connection between assessment and improvement.”

In other words, if we are all measuring things differently, we have little chance of concluding anything meaningful from those measurements and we have less ability to claim that improvements are evident across the system.

We need a robust and consistent evidence base to help us with our assessment methods and the OECD report supports the view that the national improvement framework has the potential to deliver that for us. Standardised assessment gives us the chance to move forward from this watershed, to provide a clearer and more concise narrative in the assessment process and to begin the important next phase in the life of curriculum for excellence.

Keir Bloomer’s comment that measurement systems in themselves do not raise standards or close gaps is spot on. However, measurement systems should provide us with consistency in the assessment process, from which I hope we can make informed judgments that are more reliable than anything that we currently have.

The First Minister has made it clear that using new standardised assessments in P1, P4, P7 and S3 will help our teachers to form the crucial judgments about the progress that our children are making and to provide the required support when it is most needed. Offering parents access to that information means that we can extend the scope of interest to the wider family and the crucial role that they play in our children’s education.

As usual, we will rely heavily on the good services that we obtain from Education Scotland to drive the process forward. Education Scotland has been in the vanguard of curriculum for excellence for many years and I know that many colleagues in that organisation are totally committed to improving excellence in education.

I will add a little note of caution in winding up. As Keir Bloomer said, systems and processes do not in themselves do very much. They act as enablers to help us to get things right and we must still work hard to improve things. Closing the attainment gap between our wealthiest and our poorest communities in the next decade will be an amazing achievement if we manage to do it, but an opportunity gap still exists.

Members might recall the story last year about the young student from Possilpark who achieved all the necessary qualifications for medical school at four of Scotland’s finest universities but was still refused entry. Attainment and opportunity are two very different things; I am glad that our universities are aware of that and are doing something about it through their reach initiative.

Closing the attainment gap will surely help many more talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have a duty to make that possible for all our young people in Scotland and I hope that the new framework will take us closer to that goal than we have ever been before.