Meeting of the Parliament 09 May 2017
My first point is that I have come to Parliament acknowledging that the statistics need to improve. That is an acknowledgment that those issues have to be addressed—the agenda for Government is about addressing exactly that.
Liz Smith raises the issue of the performance of pupils at S2. One of the quirks of the SSLN is that it assesses the performance of pupils at a level before they are supposed to reach that level. Young people are supposed to reach the third level at the end of S3. In my statement, I made the point that in the data that we published in December, 84 per cent of young people who reached the conclusion of S3 had acquired the level of skills in writing that they were required to achieve by that stage in their education. The SSLN essentially assesses young people’s performance at a level higher than that which they should have achieved by that particular time.
My second point relates to Liz Smith’s comments about the input of teachers into the Education and Skills Committee’s review. I remind Liz Smith that one of my first priorities as education secretary was to tackle bureaucracy within our schools. I sent the inspectors into local authorities to reduce bureaucracy and I sent out guidance to teachers to encourage them to concentrate on learning and teaching and—if my memory serves me right—not to undertake tasks that were irrelevant to the learning and teaching of young people, because I accept that we have to declutter the guidance and the classroom environment to enable teachers to concentrate on literacy and numeracy.
Thirdly, on Sue Ellis’s comments on teacher training, obviously it is essential that the quality of teacher training is of the highest possible standard and I maintain a regular dialogue with the teacher training colleges to ensure that that is the case. Of course, there is the opportunity for Education Scotland to inspect that provision to determine whether it is fulfilling all our expectations in that respect.
Lastly, on data, the Government has of course embarked on a process of significantly expanding the data that we collect on young people’s performance. The problem with the SSLN is that it does not enable us, when we see declining performance, to identify from the survey where that is happening. However, the data that we have requested to be put in place, which will be substantially reinforced by standardised assessments, will give us the ability to do that and to support young people to fulfil their potential as a result.
The Government, in embarking on its approach to education, has been very open to external critique of the approach that we have taken in Scotland. That is why we invited the OECD to assess the implementation of curriculum for excellence and why we have acted on the recommendations that the OECD asked us to act on as a consequence of its review.