Chamber
Meeting of the Parliament 19 September 2018
19 Sep 2018 · S5 · Meeting of the Parliament
Item of business
Primary 1 Tests
When we make decisions about the future of our children’s education, it is important that we have available to us dispassionate expert opinion to help us to make the correct choices. I have listened with great care to the words that Liz Smith has shared with us today. I say with the degree of respect that Liz Smith knows I have for her, that I do not consider that we have heard in the debate so far the marshalling of expert opinion that she claims.
In 2015, the Scottish Government invited the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to review Scottish education. In its report “Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective”, it said:
“The light sampling of literacy and numeracy at the national level has not provided sufficient evidence for other stakeholders to use in their own evaluative activities or for national agencies to identify with confidence the areas of strength”.
The report also states:
“There needs to be a more robust evidence base available right across the system, especially about learning outcomes and progress.”
That reference to “progress” is crucial. It is precisely what the national improvement framework and national standardised assessments seek to do.
In the same item of business
The Deputy Presiding Officer (Christine Grahame)
SNP
The next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-13945, in the name of Liz Smith, on primary 1 tests. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to ...
Liz Smith (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con)
Con
The Scottish Conservatives are very pleased to bring this debate to Parliament, because we believe that it is of crucial educational importance. I am sure th...
Bruce Crawford (Stirling) (SNP)
SNP
Is the member aware that currently 29 councils across Scotland carry out P1 assessments? Will she call today for those councils to halt the assessments, or w...
Liz Smith
Con
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 ...
The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills (John Swinney)
SNP
Liz Smith said that the Conservative Party was supportive of P1 assessments in 2016. On 28 August 2018, Liz Smith issued these words: “The Scottish Conserva...
Liz Smith
Con
I recognise that we made a mistake about primary 1. I just say to the SNP that this, coming from a party that in two programmes for government—in 2016 and 20...
Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP)
SNP
Will the member take an intervention?
Liz Smith
Con
I will not do so at the moment, if the member does not mind. In my teacher training years, I remember exactly the same debate taking place among primary tea...
Stewart Stevenson
SNP
Is the member aware that on 17 September 2017 Justine Greening announced a mandatory test for pre-school children, and that on 18 April 2018 a contract was p...
Liz Smith
Con
Thank you, Mr Stevenson. Yes, I am aware of that. The same debate is happening in England, Wales and many other places—it is not unique to Scotland. I would...
John Swinney
SNP
Does Liz Smith not accept that the issues that she recounts from a primary schoolteacher, which are entirely reasonable, should lead us to the conclusion tha...
Liz Smith
Con
No. Scottish Conservatives disagree with that. Given the evidence that has been piling up over the past two years, we consider that the time has come to call...
The Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills (John Swinney)
SNP
When we make decisions about the future of our children’s education, it is important that we have available to us dispassionate expert opinion to help us to ...
Oliver Mundell (Dumfriesshire) (Con)
Con
I wonder whether the cabinet secretary had time to listen to Professor Jim Scott’s comments this morning in the Education and Skills Committee. He said that ...
John Swinney
SNP
I have just set out why we need the assessments: the OECD told us—
Oliver Mundell
Con
Where is the evidence?
John Swinney
SNP
I am just marshalling the issue. Interruption. We sought external independent opinion, which said that we did not have enough information about learning outc...
The Deputy Presiding Officer
SNP
I am sorry, cabinet secretary, but before we carry on, I have a point to make. Mr Mundell—you are annoying me with your barracking. If you want to say someth...
John Swinney
SNP
The president of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland made the point, in the letter that she authored with my officials to directors of educ...
Iain Gray (East Lothian) (Lab)
Lab
When Mr Swinney made a statement a couple of weeks ago, I asked him whether he knew how many of those local authorities had replaced the previously used diag...
John Swinney
SNP
East Renfrewshire, for example, is a long-established assessment authority. It wants consistency between the SNSA and the historical model that it has been u...
Liz Smith
Con
When it comes to raising standards across the board, which is what we all want, what evidence does the cabinet secretary have to support his approach? With r...
John Swinney
SNP
The key point here goes back to the quotation from the OECD that I read out at the beginning of my speech. Essentially, we do not have enough information abo...
Johann Lamont (Glasgow) (Lab)
Lab
Is the data being collected at national level? We have been advised that it would not be collected at national level, but the cabinet secretary seems to be s...
John Swinney
SNP
I am saying nothing of the sort. I am saying that teachers, in working their way through the assessments, will have greater clarity about the performance of ...
The Deputy Presiding Officer
SNP
I am giving speakers a little extra time—Liz Smith could have had that, too—as we have time in hand. There were a lot of interventions. If anybody is wonderi...
Iain Gray (East Lothian) (Lab)
Lab
I am clear that we on the Labour side of the chamber have no problem with teachers assessing pupils’ learning. Teachers assess pupils’ learning every day usi...
John Swinney
SNP
Mr Gray said that we use the standardised assessments to judge performance around the country, but that is not the case. We use information from teachers’ pr...
Iain Gray
Lab
The survey is certainly not a diagnostic learning tool, and it was never claimed to be. It is a summative survey tool. Later on, I will go into a little deta...
John Swinney
SNP
I acknowledge that many teachers do not like the standardised assessments. Equally, many other teachers like them. The issue was illustrated to me this morni...