Many teachers have yet to be convinced about the value of the Scottish national standardised assessments (SNSAs), despite the government organising dozens of events since April to help schools prepare for their launch after the summer.

While some school staff who took part in trials think the assessments will help to gauge pupils’ progress more accurately, others feel unprepared and are concerned about a lack of training, it has emerged.

The Scottish government revealed more details about the assessments at a media briefing last week, where officials offered reassurances that all pupils would be fairly assessed, regardless of background, additional support needs or level of ability.

There are, for example, no time limits for the assessments - teachers will be free to let children take breaks if sitting all the questions at once is too much - and the on-screen look of the tests can be altered to help those with visual impairments.

Officials have also promised that, unlike some other forms of standardised assessment, teachers will see pupils’ results instantaneously and that there will be “offline solutions” for schools contending with poor broadband connections.

The assessments are still a work in progress, and have been shaped by trials in five local authorities and 66 schools - which between them ran 9,000 assessments - with more trialling yet to be done. This has not succeeded, however, in assuaging all concerns about the assessments, which will be run for P1, P4, P7 and S3.

Jane Peckham, national official for the NASUWT Scotland teaching union, told Tes Scotland: “Members don’t really have any enthusiasm for the SNSAs at present and certainly don’t feel prepared.”

A lack of training meant it was “hard to determine” what the SNSAs will be like, she added.

Training concerns

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said that “national standardised testing of pupils in Primary 1 was a fundamentally flawed approach to supporting children’s learning at that critical age” and showed “a lack of pedagogical insight from the Scottish government”.

He added: “The notion that the Scottish government might be better placed than teachers to direct classroom practice by micromanaging schools from Edinburgh is completely wrong and is a dangerous pathway to venture onto.”

The teaching union is also concerned about the prospect of unofficial school league tables, although it accepts that “progress has been made in shaping the Scottish standardised assessments away from an English-style high-stakes SATs approach”.

Parents appear to share some of these concerns. Joanna Murphy, chair of the National Parent Forum of Scotland, said: “It is vital that a teacher’s judgement is deemed as paramount, and from what we have seen, the forthcoming tests will help to inform this judgement in a way that does not add undue stress to our children and young people.”

She was concerned, however, that the data would be used “inappropriately” to compare pupils and schools.

Glasgow education director Maureen McKenna - whose local authority was one of the five to take part in trials - said that schools had been “generally positive”, although the assessments were not the “finished product” and “it will take time for them to evolve”.

School Leaders Scotland general secretary Jim Thewliss, whose organisation represents the secondary sector, said standardised testing had for some time commonly been used to confirm the progress of the new S1s, as well as for tracking and target-setting, “so the national tests pose us little difficulty”.