The budget set aside for Scotland’s qualifications body to implement curriculum changes and introduce national qualifications is being slashed, TESS can reveal.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority will receive £6.4 million in 2017-18 to support new qualifications and the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, down from £12.6 million in 2016-17.

The CfE budget has also been reduced across Education Scotland and central government, according to a report into last week’s draft budget.

The publication of the report, prepared for today’s meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s education committee, follows Scotland’s disappointing performance in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment global education rankings.

Those results prompted experts to say that the Scottish government now has five years to salvage CfE.

The report also comes amid growing tensions between the SQA and teachers, many of whom blame the way the new qualifications have been introduced for their workload woes. 

The budgets were cut by the Scottish government due to the “maturity of the CfE and completed implementation of the new national qualifications”, said the report prepared by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.

Exam paper mistakes

MSPs on the education committee, however, attacked the decision when taking evidence from education secretary John Swinney on the draft budget today.

The SQA had flagged up resource issues as the reason for the mistakes in this year’s N5 computing exam, said Conservative MSP Ross Thomson.

Labour MSP Johann Lamont also expressed concern that if the SQA’s budget was cut, the organisation would increase its focus on international work to generate more income, diluting its capacity to deliver in Scotland.

However, Mr Swinney argued that the changes were appropriate because the qualifications and curriculum were now developed to a “very advanced stage”.

Whilst further changes to the qualifications were in the pipeline, due to the scrapping of unit assessments, these were “more minor”, he argued.

Mr Swinney added that he would continue to monitor the decisions as the financial year progressed but said he was confident they were “appropriate for the stage of development of Scottish education”.

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