Meeting of the Parliament 02 February 2016
The Scottish Green Party welcomes the introduction of a duty on ministers to reduce inequalities of outcome, although we would have preferred a focus on increasing teacher numbers and reducing class sizes. We are, however, concerned about the potential outcomes of the duty on local authorities to follow the national improvement framework when it comes to the assessment of children’s progress.
The cabinet secretary clearly understands that we need a broad approach to reducing the attainment gap—one that requires work within, between and beyond schools—but we already have a wealth of data at local authority level and we are more than capable of working together to meet any data needs. Although we welcome the cabinet secretary’s efforts to provide assurance on the potential risks of reintroducing standardised testing, we remain concerned that, in practice, it will be difficult to prevent test data from coming out in a way that allows league tables to be constructed. We will support the general principles of the bill, but we believe that testing should remain an internal tool for use by professionals. Although teachers will, quite properly, decide when tests are carried out, the risk of the reappearance of national league tables remains.
I ask the cabinet secretary to describe what the Government will do with the new evidence that it has not been able to do so far or is unable to do at present.