Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
The national improvement framework will result in a new era of data gathering by the Scottish Government on educational performance and outcomes. That new data will rightly support the Government and Parliament in taking the necessary measures to close the attainment gap. In that light, international best practice should be at the centre of the new approach.
My amendment 39 would require the Government to examine again the international benchmarks and to consider how they interact with the national improvement framework. The benchmarks are the trends in international mathematics and science study, or TIMSS, and the progress in international reading literacy study, or PIRLS. If the national improvement framework data were to be constructed in such a way as to reflect those studies, that would allow us to compare ourselves with other leading countries in education.
We are all ambitious about the future of our country. We want to cut the gap between the richest and the rest in our classrooms in order to make Scottish education the best in the world. I want to measure success not against countries throughout the United Kingdom but against countries throughout the world. By undertaking a review against TIMSS and PIRLS, we would be able to reconsider how we benchmark progress in Scottish education against countries throughout the developed world. As an outward-looking and confident country, Scotland should be prepared to participate in well-recognised and authoritative international studies.
I ask members to support my amendment 39.