The author of Scotland’s independent review of assessment and qualifications has criticised the Scottish government’s reluctance to change the exam-heavy regime in upper secondary, warning that the system “is not just” and “does not work for many learners”.
Professor Louise Hayward made her remarks two years on from the publication of the that she led.
The review, published in June 2023, recommended scrapping exams below Higher level and introducing a Scottish Diploma of Achievement in a bid to build a more rounded picture of students’ strengths and talents.
However, the government took a year to respond to the recommendations and - with this year’s crop of students having just completed another five week-long exam diet - there is little sign of change.
Assessment in Scotland ‘has improved’
Speaking at the EIS teaching union’s annual general meeting in Aviemore last week, Professor Hayward said that “without doubt, assessment has improved” - it is, she said, “far less a question of judgement and categorisation and there is far greater focus on progression and learning”.
However, Scottish students remained “amongst the most examined in the world” and achieving parity of esteem between academic and vocational qualifications - which was an aspiration when she started teaching - was still being talked about today, she said.
National qualifications - National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers - were “still often seen as the preferred qualification”. Paraphrasing a famous quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Professor Hayward said this sent “a clear message to learners” that “all learners matter…but some matter more than others”.
“That is not a just position,” she added.
Scotland, she said, was “wary of moving even slightly from a past we know is not just” and that does not align well with the aspirations of Curriculum for Excellence.
She suggested that the reluctance might come from “a fear that change might make things worse”.
Scotland had “not always managed the process of change well”, Professor Hayward said. There were some exceptions - the introduction of Standard Grade in the 1980s had “much to commend it” and Assessment is for Learning (in the early 1990s) “also had many positive features” - but there was a tendency to get implementation wrong.
Professor Hayward said: “I honestly believe that no one sets out to develop good policy and then mess it up when ideas are put into practice in schools and classrooms. But when you look back at some of the models of change we have used, you might believe that they had been designed by someone with a real sense of humour.”
When it came to the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence, the origins of which go back more than 20 years, teachers had been drowned in paper when what they needed was time - “time to get to grips with ideas, to talk them through with others and think what they might mean for their school, their classroom, their learners”.
In the past, Professor Hayward said, change had also been forced on the profession irrespective of its quality, with teachers told “just get on with it”.
‘Real change means everyone changes’
But “real change means everyone changes”, she said - everyone has to be involved, the educational purpose of policy has to be clear, and all parts of the system have to align ”like an old-fashioned watch”.
Professor Hayward concluded: “Things are better in education. We have a clearer idea of what will make things better and we know more than we did about how to get there.”
She praised teachers for “doing more than might reasonably be asked of them to tackle some of societies biggest problems” - from poverty to the rise of AI and the blurring of fact and fiction - and urged the government to “truly value every person and reflect that in its education system”.
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