Headteachers must prepare for their schools to be ranked in league tables after standardised assessments are introduced, the new general secretary of the education directors’ body ADES has warned.

Michael Wood told Tes Scotland, in his first interview since taking on the role, that the controversial assessments - due to start after the summer - were “one of the pluses on the horizon” of Scottish education.

The detailed national picture they will create at P1, P4, P7 and S3 would help every pupil to “get an equal deal” by allowing schools to work out local priorities, he said.

But he warned that they would inevitably lead to league tables being drawn up by the media, and urged schools to prepare to defend their performance.

The former Dundee education director said: “I don’t think that you can ever walk away from the potential for league tables.

“I think, what you’ve got to do is explain that, in this particular school, this is our curriculum rationale, this is why we are doing it.

“We have got to get better at spreading the good news stories…as a profession. For every negative story about education, there are 20 good news stories.”

Contrasting views

Wood did not think schools would “teach to the test”; the same fears were expressed about the former 5-14 curriculum and “it didn’t happen”, he said.

Nor did he believe that the assessments would add to teachers’ workload, partly because computer systems would allow marking to be carried out quickly.

He added that “a young person can’t be doing two things at once - they can’t be doing a standardised assessment and something else - so clearly...it’s not going to be adding [to teachers’ workloads]”.

His views contrast sharply with those expressed by members of the EIS teaching union at a meeting last June.

But Mr Wood was “optimistic” that the assessments would be low-key and added that they “should not be a new experience for youngsters” as many had experienced similar locally run schemes.

Mr Wood, who took over from John Stodter, said he did not know why S2 writing scores were so poor in the final Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) this month.

He expressed doubt about the accuracy of the SSLN, arguing that there was a “mismatch” with more positive national data published in December, which was based on teachers’ judgements.

SSLN was only a sample - albeit a large one of around 11,000 pupils - said Mr Wood, and national assessments would provide a more detailed picture of literacy and numeracy. “If you want to improve the system, then you’ve got to know what’s wrong with it,” he said.

Mr Wood felt teachers were belatedly getting the help needed to make sense of Curriculum for Excellence. He said that the “simplified benchmarks” published last year “tell each teacher in the country, ‘Right, this is what is expected of you.’”

Initially, the move away from the “very structured” 5-14 curriculum to give teachers much more freedom had actually led to “inconsistency” as they struggled without the support they were used to, he added.

‘Not joined up’

Mr Wood voiced fears that Scottish education suffered from “too many things happening in isolation”. The new Scottish Attainment Challenge, for example, has got “a variety of people who are looking at it - but it’s not joined up”. He hoped that the government’s response to the education governance review - due next month - would press ahead with creating regional education boards to help schools share ideas across local authorities.

However, there was a danger that they could also lead to increased “bureaucracy”, he said.

He said that school inspection - a role he filled for 12 years - has not moved on enough from a traditional “clipboard, checklist” approach. “I wouldn’t even call it inspection,” said Mr Wood, who suggested calling it “adspection” to imply that inspectors had a more advisory, supportive role.

On teacher recruitment problems, he was hopeful that several “quite radical” ideas, such as schemes allowing council workers to retrain as teachers while continuing in their job, would improve the situation.

Another scheme, Teach First, which fast-tracks talented graduates in England and Wales into teaching, has long been resisted in Scotland.

Despite the organisation recently giving evidence at the Scottish Parliament, Mr Wood insisted that, north of the border, there remained “no real desire or need for Teach First at the moment”.