Hansard

I will start by offering Mary Scanlon some gentle advice. She might be in danger of overplaying her hand if the dark mutterings among Scottish National Party members are anything to go by; she is at risk of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Laughter. Now that we are an hour into proceedings, I offer some reassurance to the pupils and staff of Commercial primary school that the committee will at some stage get round to voting on the amendments but, as the convener indicated, it is a lengthy and complex set of amendments that we are considering. As we have heard, I do not think that any of us disputes the fact that we need to do more to allow all children to fulfil their potential. Too often, a child’s life chances are predetermined by the circumstances of their birth. The evidence consistently points to the fact that children from deprived backgrounds invariably finish their formal education with significantly lower levels of attainment than their more affluent peers. That is not acceptable. A determination to close the attainment gap is not new, but progress has been limited and glacially slow, and that has been a frustration for successive Administrations, as well as MSPs of all political persuasions. In that sense, I applaud any effort to make a meaningful breakthrough and to deliver effective change. As Children in Scotland reminds us in its briefing for today’s session, “the educational inequalities that stem from socio-economic disadvantage are complex and multifaceted”. Without decrying the attempts that the Government is making through the establishment of a national improvement framework, Children in Scotland has concluded that there is “real concern within the sector over a number of controversial elements of the Framework as well as with the manner in which consultation with key stakeholders has been managed”. That has been a common refrain in relation to the bill and, as Mary Scanlon indicated, we find ourselves in the position of having to consider and vote on amendments to a framework that none of us has seen and which, as Children in Scotland, teaching unions and others have made clear, is far from commanding universal agreement. Frankly, that is a ludicrous position for us to find ourselves in. Even the rationale for the framework has been questioned. At stage 1, we heard from various witnesses that “inequalities of outcome” was neither adequately defined nor set against any meaningful or measurable benchmarks. In turn, the framework uses the term “attainment gap” as though there is universal acceptance or understanding of what that means. That leads Children in Scotland to accuse ministers of “reducing what is a complex set of issues to an easily identifiable slogan with the hope that these issues will be amenable to equally short-term solutions”. Such a damning conclusion has uncomfortable echoes of Keir Bloomer’s earlier criticism of the Government’s approach in the bill as “pious thinking masquerading as law making.”—Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 9 June 2015; c 20. One of the clearest examples of that oversimplification is the determination of ministers to press ahead with national standardised testing for pupils in primaries 1, 4 and 7 and secondary 3, which has been denounced by teaching unions as “a backward step”, and few teachers can be found who have a good word to say about it. Although they were undoubtedly well intentioned, the explanations that the minister gave to the committee last month simply created more confusion, uncertainty and disbelief among those in the sector. She denies, as does the First Minister, that the Government is ushering in a return to high-stakes testing, teaching to the test and league tables, yet few believe them. The cabinet secretary is right when she says that assessment of pupils is at the heart of good teaching. Teachers do that on a daily basis: they observe what happens in the classroom, they mark pupils’ work, they glean information from the standardised tests that are already in place and, crucially, they have an in-depth knowledge of each young person as an individual. The Scottish education system has no shortage of such data, particularly at classroom and school level. The focus should be on making better use of the wealth of information that we already have, as we heard in evidence last month. National standardised tests of literacy and numeracy will simply not provide a rounded evaluation of student learning; instead, they go against the whole ethos of curriculum for excellence. Such tests are prone to bias and human error, but that information will be used by local and central government to form policy and substantiate decisions. In addition, the information technology systems to support the tests are incredibly expensive. Whether or not ministers believe that they are sanctioning teaching to the test and league tables, that is an almost inevitable consequence of introducing national standardised testing in the way proposed. My amendment 106A seeks to avoid that risk by removing such a provision from whatever is finally agreed in the national improvement framework. More consultation is needed generally, which will take time, but it is important that pupils, teachers and parents are given early assurance that the ill-considered plans for national standardised testing will not be a feature of those discussions. Turning briefly to the other amendments in the group, the changes proposed in the minister’s amendment 104 are certainly an improvement on what was originally proposed, as Mary Scanlon highlighted earlier. However, I am worried by the extent, scale and implications of the reporting requirements that would be placed on local councils. They seem disproportionate and, in some cases, counterproductive in terms of the activity that they will generate. However, Mark Griffin’s amendments 162 and 163 would lend some strength to initiatives such as Save the Children’s “Read on. Get on.” campaign, which I have been very much in support of, so I will support amendments 162 and 163. Mark Griffin’s amendments and those of Malcolm Chisholm and Mary Scanlon all seek to broaden the definition of those who would be likely to benefit from any concerted action to address inequalities of outcome. I think that all those amendments are worthy of some support, but I am particularly supportive of Mark Griffin’s proposals to include specifically those children who are looked after and/or in care. The minister insisted that her amendments give the option for the provisions to be so extended, but I think that the difficulty at present is that the Government appears to recognise formally only those affected by socioeconomic factors, which I think could create an unintentional hierarchy of need but which amendment 104A and others could help to avoid. I remain deeply unhappy about the position that this committee has been put in as a result of the way in which the Government has approached the bill and the fact that we are being asked to vote on amendments in a partial vacuum, and in some respects a complete one. I hope—though I doubt—that the minister will heed the concerns that I have expressed, which are backed by teaching unions and many in the education and wider children’s sector, and call a halt to the ill-thought-out plans for what one expert described to me earlier this week as hopelessly blunt, one-size-fits-all national standardised testing.