Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for allowing the amendments to be considered. I observe at the outset that Mark Griffin’s amendment 39 appears to be driving at much the same thing as my amendments 30 and 31. My amendment 32 aims to hold ministers to their word about the timing of national testing, should it go ahead.
However, my preferred option, and that of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, is captured in amendment 29. I urge the Government to heed the calls of teaching unions, teachers and parents to drop plans for national standardised testing in primary schools.
Not one of us disputes the need to do more to allow every child to fulfil his or her potential, and too often a child’s life chances appear to be predetermined by the circumstances of their birth. However, as Children in Scotland said at stage 2:
“the educational inequalities that stem from socio-economic disadvantage are complex and multifaceted”.
Children in Scotland went on to accuse ministers of reducing
“a complex set of issues ... to an easily identifiable slogan with the hope that these issues will be amenable to equally short-term solutions.”
That over-simplification is epitomised by the determination of ministers to return to national testing for primary pupils. It has been criticised by teaching unions as “a backward step” and few teachers have a good word to say about it. The emeritus professor of education at the University of Strathclyde observed last week that
“it is notable that the last time such an approach was introduced was by a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher ... born of a lack of trust in the teaching profession and narrow vision of what constituted progress”.
Denials from the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning and the First Minister that they are ushering in a return to high-stakes testing, teaching to the test and league tables are difficult to square with what is proposed. Information will be available on a school-by-school basis, so whether or not league tables are sanctioned by ministers, it seems that they are inevitable.
Of course, assessment of pupils is at the heart of good teaching. Teachers do it on a daily basis: observing what happens in the classroom, marking pupils’ work, and gleaning information from the standardised tests that are already in place and—crucially—from their in-depth knowledge of the young person as an individual. The Scottish education system has no shortage of such data, particularly at classroom and school levels. The focus should be on making better use of the wealth of information that we already have.
Previously, the only people who were arguing for a return to national testing were the Conservatives, but they have never made any secret of their desire to return to league tables. Bizarrely, the Scottish National Party Government now wants to ignore the concerns that have been raised by teaching unions, teachers and parents, and to abandon the ethos of curriculum for excellence, by pursuing a similar approach.
Jackie Brock of Children in Scotland concluded:
“There is clear evidence that high-stakes standardised testing, as proposed in the National Improvement Framework, can have a detrimental effect on all children's wellbeing.”
In that context, I urge Parliament to reject the approach and to support amendment 29, which is in my name.
I move amendment 29.