Meeting of the Parliament 24 June 2025 [Draft]
I ask members to please be patient and consider what I say carefully as I outline a number of the amendments in this group, which may take a bit of time.
The amendments in group 2 invite Parliament to address and resolve what is considered to be the bill’s central question and an important policy choice: will Scotland at last secure an independent guardian of standards in qualifications? Will the Government actually abolish the Scottish Qualifications Authority, or will there simply be a rebrand?
Separating the body that awards qualifications from the body that regulates and accredits them is fundamental, and my amendment 98 would do just that. Along with consequential amendments 179, 266, 289, 304 and 307 to 311, amendment 98 would help to ensure that the new qualifications body can begin afresh, with leadership embedded in a reformed vision and with new governance, while also being independent from the body that accredits and regulates qualifications.
That separation is critical to restoring trust in the system. Trust and confidence are central to the integrity of any education system, but that integrity has broken down—not overnight, not as a consequence of one decision or event and certainly not as a result of anything that staff in schools or parents and pupils have done, but as a result of multiple failures by the SQA. The starkest failure was during the pandemic, when the then Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, John Swinney, downgraded the exam results of the poorest pupils.
Young people are our greatest asset in Scotland. We owe it to them to create the best possible environment for them so that they can thrive. Experts have told us what that means and what it looks like. It means a new curriculum agency in which teachers and subject specialists can work in networks, together, to develop world-leading resources for a world-leading curriculum, supported by a Government that shows leadership and direction, but at arm’s length.
Colleagues will recall that every review that has been placed before us—the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development study and Professor Muir’s report—as well as the evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee at stage 1 made the same diagnosis: the curriculum, accreditation and improvement functions are dispersed across too many bodies that do not always communicate and are not coherent.
Setting up a new body such as curriculum Scotland—a single, arm’s-length organisation that would steer what is taught, guarantee the standard of the certificates that flow from that teaching and drive the continuous improvement of both—is the remedy for that. As a reformed Education Scotland that would become independent of Government, it would deliver opportunity for all, support a broad curriculum, empower teachers to design and deliver that curriculum and embed coherence in the system.
Young people would be supported to learn, driven by their interests, aspirations and what employers need, not by assessment, as often happens now. Curriculum Scotland as a body could support that and broaden the offer on school-based qualifications so that vocational, academic and technical pathways are delivered, valued, assessed and recognised. That is why leaving the accreditation function in the qualifications body is not a palatable option.
The proposal in the amendments to move accreditation to a new body—whether to curriculum Scotland or another body—would help to deliver both scrutiny and parity of esteem. Currently, school-based qualifications—