Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
As Scottish Conservatives have said many times before, we are firmly committed to standardised and consistent testing that allows parents and teachers to have meaningful and accurate information about the progress of their children and how that progress measures against other pupils’. That is not only because literacy and numeracy trends tell us that educational standards are not as good as they should be; just as important is that it is the right thing to do educationally. It is not about more testing or reporting about how we test, but about better testing. We whole-heartedly support the principle of good-quality testing, but we want the result of the bill to be successful classroom practice rather than burdens on local authorities when it comes to reporting.
We cannot agree with Liam McArthur on amendments 29 to 31, given that they subscribe to the Liberals’ overall objection to testing and would introduce a complex reporting structure about “wellbeing”. However, we would accept amendment 32, should he decide to press it, because it seeks to reduce the unnecessary burden on councils in relation to the dates of testing, on which provision the bill is far too prescriptive.
We have some sympathy with the intention of amendment 39 in Mark Griffin’s name, especially in respect of the need to ensure that Scotland participates in the TIMSS and PIRLS data, because we firmly believe that that has considerable qualitative value in a way that we believe is important when measuring educational output. However, the other parts of the amendment are overly prescriptive; for that reason, we cannot accept it.