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Education and Skills Committee 19 September 2018

19 Sep 2018 · S5 · Education and Skills Committee

Item of business

2018 Exam Diet (Curriculum and Attainment Trends)

Professor Scott Watch on SPTV

One wants to encourage achievement. If we look at the leaver data from 2009-10, the number of children leaving school with no qualification is slowly creeping up; that is in my set of stats and in Janet Brown’s set of stats. It is still a small number, but the fact that it is creeping up in 21st century Scotland is not something that any of us should accept. Part of that is because some schools have been boldly experimental. There is always a danger for headteachers around that; they should be able to experiment with their school communities and they should try to offer a different range of experiences for the children, but my acid test as a headteacher was always to ask: what will happen to that young man or woman 10 years down the line when they are applying for their third job? Have we equipped them not just to go out of the door into a positive destination but to stay in one? Have we given them the appropriate broad and deep set of experiences to support them? There has been some experimentation both before and since CFE with things such as the Award Scheme Development and Accreditation Network and bringing the Duke of Edinburgh’s award into the curriculum. In Perth high school, we did all that pre-CFE and I know that my successor still does all that post-CFE. There does not seem to be any difference in the alternative experiences in many places. I have not carefully added up the numbers for level 3, so I will let the SQA contradict me if I am in any way wrong, but since we moved away from standard grade, it appears that children on the narrower curriculum, at a lower level, are more prone to failure and thus some of them are dropping right through the system and gaining nothing. I need to do some research—or someone else needs to do some research—to track the children at the bottom end who are gaining five, four, three, or two qualifications or just one qualification at that level. 10:45 That information is in the leaver data, but it would have to be differentiated for the least able. That would allow us to see whether there is a significant change at the bottom. Obviously, the global measures, such as the number of children enrolling at level 3 compared with the number of children attaining a level 3 qualification, indicate that there has been a drop-off. I looked very carefully to see whether there was clear evidence that all the children who disappeared from the level 3 stats had moved into level 4, which would indicate that there was a significant gain due to CFE. Sadly, the stats show that although there may be some upward movement from level 3 to level 4 and from level 4 to level 5, a significant number of other children have just disappeared from attainment measures, and that is not necessarily because of the curricular narrowing. The 33.8 per cent drop in overall attainment is 17 per cent structural; it is due to curricular narrowing. The rest of it is partially due to a drop in the roll, and it is partially due to how a school has structured its curriculum and the aspirations of headteachers, teachers and parents in that school. There are several questions to be investigated about exactly what is happening in certain schools in Scotland. However, there is no doubt that the removal of the safety net has added to the problem for those children.

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Education and Skills Committee 19 September 2018

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