Meeting of the Parliament 19 September 2018
I am very well aware of exactly what councils are saying just now. In some of those very same councils, teachers are speaking out loud and clear about their concerns.
Let me be crystal clear about our position and restate our commitment to rigorous standardised tests in P4, P7 and secondary 3, as a crucial part of improving educational attainment and measuring progress in our schools.
I know that some parties disagree with standardised assessments generally, but we support the Scottish National Party’s arguments about why they are important in terms of education and accountability. In our view, in drawing his conclusions, John Swinney was absolutely right to look at the trends in the recent programme for international student assessment—PISA—results and the comment in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s report from three years ago, both of which were consistent with the 2014 Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy. There was undoubtedly a very strong argument for delivering better standardised assessment. Mr Swinney is correct to say that it has been too easy for some schools and local authorities to be less than wholly accountable for their educational performance. It was right to introduce standardisation that provides better accountability.
Let me be unequivocal. We said in our manifesto in 2016 that primary 1 testing was part of that and we should not have argued otherwise. However, it is also a matter of public record that, during the intervening two years, we have on several occasions said in Parliament and in the media that we have misgivings about primary 1 tests in a way that we do not have about P4, P7 and S3 tests.