Meeting of the Parliament 25 October 2018
I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement. I draw his attention to a comment that he made on 15 March 2001, while criticising the then Scottish Executive, when he said:
“People expect Parliament to decide.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2001; c 591.]
Does the cabinet secretary still believe that the will of this Parliament is paramount? Does he believe that this Parliament voted to act on the evidence that had been provided by a large number of primary 1 teachers, who were telling the cabinet secretary that the tests do not add value to the assessments that are already in place and are not wholly in line with the play-based philosophy and early years of the curriculum for excellence?
In his speech to the Scottish National Party conference, the cabinet secretary called the Opposition parties a disgrace on the issue and asserted that we were resorting to “political opportunism” rather than engaging with the educational arguments about the whole issue. Does the cabinet secretary think that the primary 1 teachers, members of the public and parents who oppose the tests are also a disgrace? Does he think that they, too, are guilty of political opportunism?
Finally, if the cabinet secretary now agrees that there is a need for an independent review, I ask him again exactly what evidence convinced him that four and five-year-olds in Scotland needed to be tested in the way that he proposed, when many high-performing education systems do not consider such tests to be necessary or educationally beneficial.