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Nick Page, the recently appointed chief executive of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, doesn’t have an office. But it’s not an embarrassing oversight - it’s a conscious choice.

The SQA has premises in Dalkeith and Glasgow and, in both, Page has vacated the space typically occupied by the head of the body in favour of being out in the open-plan spaces occupied by the rest of the staff.

“As a leader, why would you want to be tucked away in a corner in a big office behind a big desk? It’s not my style of leadership,” he says. “If I’m going to understand and learn about the complexities of national qualifications and things like that, I have to be out and I have to be knowing these people, and they need to be educating me.”

Working in a school

Page began his career as a geography teacher but, having worked in England and Wales, this is his first foray into Scottish education. And it is not just the brains of his staff that he is keen to pick in his new setting.

He is also putting out feelers to see if he, and potentially other SQA staff, can work out of a local school or college for a few days each week. Page says he has already run the idea past the principal of Glasgow Kelvin College, Joanna Campbell, and she is supportive.

“I’ll go and work in any school and I’m happy to do that… Why shouldn’t we as an organisation be in earshot of learners?”

He adds: “We’re the front face of our organisation, therefore talk to us. This is about moving away from our current form and being very different in our approach.”

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So, what is his assessment of what went wrong for the SQA, which, come December, is due to be replaced by Qualifications Scotland?

Page is resistant to raking over the past. SQA staff are “bruised” - he is “very sensitive” to that - but he wants to focus on the future. He is “very much about now, and tomorrow, and next week”.

Others, including education secretary Jenny Gilruth, have been more forthright on past failings.

Gilruth has described the SQA as “distanced from the profession”��- as she put it last October - and has told the Scottish Parliament’s Education Children and Young People Committee that the new body must be “less defensive”, “less about gatekeeping” and instead put teachers’ and students’ views “at its heart”.

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Such complaints go back many years, but it was a 2021 report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development��- highlighting the misalignment between the very traditional way Scottish senior students are assessed and the ambitions of Curriculum for Excellence, as well as the travails of the exam replacement model during Covid - that sealed the SQA’s fate.

‘It can’t be a rebrand’

There is, however, a lack of confidence among key players, from teachers and school leaders to education directors, that the advent of Qualifications Scotland will result in something dramatically different from the SQA. What does Page say to those who fear the government’s reform will be little more than an expensive rebrand?

“It can’t be a rebrand, because we’ve now got a law that sets out very clearly our mission for Scotland, so it would not meet the legal duties. I’m respectful of the law; you follow the law.”

The legislation to create a new body was passed by the Scottish Parliament before summer recess in June, with a slew of amendments and a debate that ran into the evening.

The most contentious topic, Gilruth told the Scottish Parliament, was “the location and scope of the accreditation function”. Critics fear that, if there is not a clean split between the SQA’s twin roles of both awarding and regulating qualifications, the new body will continue to “mark its own homework”.

Is Page - who was accustomed in England to a standalone qualifications and assessment regulator, Ofqual - satisfied with what is in place?

He says accreditation under the new legislation will be “connected but ‘arms length’” - it will have its own committee and convener.

“My job is to make sure it operates effectively, not to tell it how to operate.”

He adds that “it’s very clear” under the terms of the new legislation that, within two years, these arrangements will be reviewed - which is “a sensible and appropriate way of going about it”.

Education reform, then, has not yet resolved this key issue; meanwhile, a group of staff who have already had years of associated uncertainty and anxiety face years more of it.

The clear advantage the SQA now has, however, is the security of a leader in post for the long haul. This is more than can be said for the two other bodies undergoing reform, given that two recruitment drives to appoint a chief inspector and a chief executive of Education Scotland have failed to deliver.

Page, however, could be viewed as a contentious choice.

He began his career as a teacher and worked in schools for just over a decade, ending up as a secondary deputy head in Wales. He then moved into the private sector and, after that, into local government. First, he worked as strategic director of children’s services in Salford; in 2015, he was appointed chief executive of Solihull Council.

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Page was in that role until, in January 2023, he resigned in the wake of a highly critical Ofsted inspection of children’s services, which found children facing “significant harm” due to delayed responses. It rated the council’s children’s services “inadequate”.

The report followed the death, in June 2020, of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, who was killed by his father and his father’s partner.

What would he say to anyone who believes that, in light of this, he is not the right person to lead the SQA and Qualifications Scotland?

Page underlines the broad scope of the council chief executive role, of being “responsible for 435 laws and 1,500 legal duties”, as well as “everything from registering pet shops and zoos to providing the most sensitive care for the most vulnerable people”.

Within that, he adds, “we lost sight of a little boy. And because we lost sight, as a local authority, with our police colleagues, our school colleagues, right at the start of the pandemic, in lockdown, he was murdered by his father and his father’s partner.”

He says that “unfortunately, sometimes evil people will do evil things despite all the best safeguards we put in”, adding that it was found to be “a system issue that we got wrong - and if it’s a system issue, I’m accountable”.

He adds: “For me and my values, it’s really important that I stand in front of my organisation, particularly given the scrutiny they were under. That’s just the way I’m wired.”

Mentoring and coaching

In the two-and-a-half years since he resigned, Page has been doing “lots of mentoring and coaching work with senior leaders across the public sector”, as well as taking “a number of qualifications”.

Now, he must ensure that the SQA plays its part in Scotland’s “education and learning transformation”, as he puts it.

A timeline for the new qualifications was published in June. The reformed National 4 and National 5 qualifications will be fully introduced in 2031, followed by Highers and Advanced Highers in 2032.

Is that soon enough - and how fundamental will those changes be?

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He doesn’t beat about the bush: it is not fast enough and he would like to “go far” in the reform of how students are assessed.

While he still sees a role for exams, he believes that “when you balance that with coursework, investigation, project work, [it] gives you a much bigger picture of ability and understanding”.

Equally, however, he is aware of the workload pressure that more coursework and continuous assessment could put on teachers. He talks about trialling and testing changes “so that when we get to system scale, Scotland is confident in it” - as well as engaging more deeply with the profession around qualifications design.

“We bring in lots of educators to help us write exam papers and develop them and mark them, which is brilliant, but I still think we’ve got lots of opportunity to go further with that and really open things up,” he says

On the timeline, Page promises that schools and teachers will not have to wait until the early 2030s to start seeing change in how students are assessed - “whole-system change” will come then, but Qualifications Scotland will be about “continual improvement and change”.

But will Qualifications Scotland have the resources it needs to do everything it needs to?

Page says no public body will say they have enough, and “we are no different”.

But he believes Qualifications Scotland can be “more efficient, and more productive, and more transformative”; he talks about streamlining qualifications, which is something Gilruth also wants to see. In her 2024 of qualifications and assessment, the education secretary said the senior phase had become “overly complex” and needed “a degree of rationalisation” to make it “less confusing for young people”.

Her comments came after James Withers, author of the 2023 skills review, flagged up the “bewildering array of acronyms and terms” senior phase pupils face when making course choices.

Cost of running exams

What about the entry fees and levies charged to councils for SQA qualifications, which have not changed since 2012-13 - will they continue to be fixed?

“It doesn’t cover our costs,” says Page.

The SQA says the budget for delivering the 2025-26 exam diet is approximately £75 million and the amount it receives in fees and levies is around £30 million.

Page says SQA and its successor body “will continue to review levies”, but he does not want to put “financial pressure onto another part of the public system”.

He wants to work with councils and headteachers to find a solution. It might be about reducing costs by “going digital” or by moving to “a blended model of assessment”.

The point is, exams are not cheap to run. Recently, it emerged that the University of Edinburgh - as part of cost-cutting measures to plug a £140 million black hole - was encouraging faculties to reduce the number of exams because of the “considerable additional academic, administrative and estates costs”, as well as “the need for alternative assessments” for certain students.

In Scotland, the number of school students requiring special adjustments for exams is rising year on year. This year, in the wake of results day on 5 August, headteachers warned that a crisis was looming. One of the most common requests from students is to sit exams in separate accommodation, but schools fear they are “running out of small rooms and nooks and crannies”.

The SQA, meanwhile, has seen the amount it spends on invigilators more than double between 2015-16 and 2024-25, from £2.1 million to £4.9 million. The main reason is “significant increases in the number of learners requiring assessment arrangements”.

In terms of “going digital”, Page highlights the , as digitisation drives down demand for traditional mail. He suggests the SQA - which spends “millions of pounds” sending out certificates - could have something to learn.

But that particular cost saving could be some time off - Page estimates anywhere from 5-10 years. And he is clear that the SQA will not make that decision alone, as the buy-in of learners and educators will be essential.

It is abundantly clear that Page has got the memo: the SQA needs to be more open and to work more closely with the people it serves.

Whether it is necessary for him to start hot-desking in the local secondary is perhaps debatable - but if it demonstrates a willingness to do things differently, then perhaps SQA reform really will be more than a rebrand.

Emma Seith is a senior reporter at Tes

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