The Scottish government announced last week that it “supports reform of national qualifications and assessment” as if this were a big revelation, leaving the rest of us to exchange puzzled glances and mouth to one another: “Didn’t we already know that?”
This was confusing mainly because - while the government obviously thought it needed to make its position crystal clear - everyone else had, by and large, inferred that this was the case and actually thought we were already several months down of the road of qualifications reform.
After all, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) review was published in June and all its recommendations were accepted by the government. One key criticism was that the qualifications taken in the senior phase of secondary in Scotland - with the exception of the Advanced Highers - do not match the ambitions of the curriculum and, therefore, they actually prevent schools from delivering it.
On top of that, the OECD said, these assessments - with their focus on “traditional exams” and “memory-based assessment” - even warp what goes on in the early phase of secondary school, when there are no exams but students are being funnelled towards them.
As already stated, the government accepted all the recommendations and, within hours, announced that it was replacing the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) - so nobody thought that the way the qualifications are currently assessed was going to survive. Still, there can be no confusion now: the government is gearing up to make some changes.
Except in the areas where it is not.
Because, while education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville’s statement in the Scottish Parliament last week was dressed up as the government committing to reform, in reality it seemed to be about the government drawing lines in the sand in terms of how far it is willing to go.
In her address, Ms Somerville said that a consultation would be carried out to determine “the purpose and principles that should underpin reform of national qualifications and assessment”, but she added that “externally assessed examinations will remain part of the new system” - so exams are here to stay in some form.
Ruling anything out - or in - at this early stage, before a consultation has even got off the ground, will likely rankle with teachers, not because there is wholesale support for the scrapping of exams but because it raises questions about how genuine the consultation is.
Ms Somerville was also keen to stress that the Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSAs) would “continue to play an important role” and that teacher professional judgement would continue to be “the primary means of assessing progress in the broad general education”.
But then she also announced plans for “a sample-based survey that will look across the capacities of Curriculum for Excellence”.
This was somewhat confusing because a previous sample survey, the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN), was scrapped to make way for the SNSAs - the online tests of literacy and numeracy sat in P1, P4, P7 and S3. Did this mean both would run in tandem?
No. Introducing a new sample-based survey was not about bringing back the SSLN, said Ms Somerville - even though the OECD had said the achievement-of-the-level data that the government now collects, and that the results of the SNSAs feed into, “may not be giving the system the robust data needed to monitor student achievement.”
Unfortunately, however, it has not been made clear what the purpose of the new survey will actually be.
It seems likely, though, that the government is looking to address concerns - raised by the OECD and the auditor general - that although it is generally accepted that schools are about more than exam results and attainment, there is precious little data on how good they are at developing things such as confidence and wellbeing, or “the capacities beyond ‘successful learner’”, as the OECD put it.
Suffice to say, despite Ms Somerville’s assertion that she was going to be “very clear” about the data proposals, she wasn’t really.
The only thing that seems obvious is that the government is already more concerned about limiting the ammo that its critics have to fire than really trying to get assessment right.
By saying that it will not scrap exams, it is trying to limit the traction that opposition parties can get out of the reform process.
But given that shadow education secretary Oliver Mundell still accused the government of doubling down on “radical and ill-thought-out reforms that will end exams as we know them”, it’s questionable whether that tactic was a success.
And, by refusing to throw in the towel when it comes to the SNSAs, and in doing so ignoring its own independent advisers, the government appears to be trying to save face - to scrap the SNSAs would be humiliating, after all the political capital that went into them.
It is all depressingly familiar. But, despite this, the parameters for reform remain broad - how the SQA (or its successor) and Education Scotland will look in the future is yet to be decided. And, while we know that exams will not be scrapped, we do not know how big a role they will play in assessing young people in the future, whether they will continue to exist in S4 at all for students staying on in school, or the extent to which projects - and coursework, continuous assessment and teacher judgement - will contribute to final awards.
All this is, apparently, still up for grabs.
So, teachers should take heart and make sure they have their say, because, despite the politicking, this reform process remains a huge opportunity. For starters, the Muir review on education reform closes on 26 November - mark it in red pen in your diary.
Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith
This article originally appeared in the 5 November 2021 issue under the headline “National tests and exams here to stay - but scope remains for big changes”
