Overhauling the qualifications taken by senior-phase students at Lomond School was not an easy choice, says principal Claire Chisholm - it was the “hard path”.

But, while she says there is much to admire about Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), she sees little to praise in the “assessment-driven, assessment-heavy” Scottish qualifications system that the independent school in Helensburgh had worked with until students embarked on the International Baccalaureate (IB) in August 2021.

“I want our young people to be out there solving the problems that have never been solved before - the poverty that we have got, the inequality, the economic instability, the war, the disharmony - and that is not going to happen by memorising facts that we have been memorising for the last 100 years. We needed to change things up,” she says.

Lomond’s headteacher argues that “mastery in education does not come from facts” but from “pulling on a thread, nurturing curiosity, asking why, asking how and taking the learning to the next level”.

Scottish emphasis on exams

Chisholm is not alone in seeing a mismatch between Scotland’s exam-focused qualifications system and the ambitions of CfE. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2021 review of CfE highlighted just such a “misalignment”.

That report was followed by Professor Gordon Stobart’s more in-depth look at Scotland’s upper secondary qualifications, commissioned by the Scottish government from the OECD, and published the same year.

It highlighted “examination loading” that takes place in Scotland, with students sitting exams at the end of S4, S5 and S6. He contrasted New Zealand and Ontario in Canada, which had “broken away from the British model of single-subject examinations and of extensive external examinations”.

Stobart’s report was the first to suggest that exams should be scrapped in S4 and replaced with “a school graduation certificate” for those leaving school at 16.

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Then, in 2023, Professor Louise Hayward’s Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment, commissioned by the government, similarly pointed to “the significant amount of time spent on rehearsal for high-stakes examinations”.

It suggested scrapping exams below Higher level; making two-year courses the default; and introducing a wider range of assessment, as well as a leaver certificate - the Scottish Diploma of Achievement (SDA) - that would recognise more than just academic attainment.

Hayward’s proposals have the backing of School Leaders Scotland, the education directors’ body ADES and the country’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, but while the government is pushing ahead with replacing the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), there is no concrete plan to reform how students in upper secondary are assessed.

Responding to the Hayward report - over a year later, in September 2024 - education secretary Jenny Gilruth rejected the proposal that exams should be scrapped at National 5, but agreed there were “a number of practical national courses where an exam might not be needed” and that there should be “less reliance on high-stakes final exams”, with internal and continuous assessment playing a bigger part.

Statement promised in January

Yet, how this will be achieved is unclear. Further detail on qualifications reform was expected in Gilruth’s statement to the Scottish Parliament in December but none was forthcoming; instead, another statement was promised in January.

As an independent school, however, Lomond had the autonomy to forge ahead. Its experience transitioning to a new qualifications system could provide insight for the wider education system, given that Hayward said the IB diploma programme had provided inspiration for her report.

In October, she told the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee that the proposed SDA, for example, “has much in common with ideas in the International Baccalaureate”.

This was also recently recognised by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) which, in a report looking at how to “future proof” Scottish education, praised IB qualifications because they deal in more than “pure knowledge gain”.

The RSE described the SDA as “in a similar vein” because its aim was to “better capture the full breadth of an individual’s learning beyond routine standardised assessments, which are known to be an imperfect means of measuring attainment”.

Although private schools are often viewed as existing on a different plane to hard-pressed state schools, the sector’s financial woes - with two schools closing their doors in 2024 - are by now well known; the source of much of the pain, VAT on school fees, became a reality this month.

Lomond’s own struggles with such issues have hit the headlines, although the school says it has now turned a corner. That it had the conviction to introduce a new qualifications system - very much in tune with Hayward’s recommendations - at a time of financial pressure arguably makes its IB experience an even more compelling case study.

But how do Hayward’s proposals and the IB diploma programme compare?

Speaking to Tes Scotland, Professor Hayward explains that the IB diploma sets out to develop “breadth of knowledge but also students who flourish physically, intellectually, emotionally and ethically”.

Adopting an IB-style approach in Scotland

That ambition links well to the ambitions of CfE and its ”four capacities”, she says. However, adopting the IB wholesale was not seen as viable by the assessment and qualifications review group, because it is “very expensive” and was not considered inclusive enough.

The IB programmes were viewed by the review group, Hayward explains, as being “for certain groups of young people” - and in Scotland, there is a “strong push that whatever system we developed should be an inclusive one”.

Hayward says: “It had to be something that recognised the achievements of every young person and their value.

“I always think of children with severe and complex needs and their parents: if a qualifications system is inclusive, then it will also recognise the really major achievements of that child and celebrate them in the same way that we celebrate the young person that gets seven Highers in one sitting.”

The review group toyed with naming the SDA the “Scottish Baccalaureate”, but Hayward says the term “baccalaureate” was viewed by some review group members as “elitist”.

The other stumbling block, of course, is that a Scottish baccalaureate already exists, albeit the qualification has struggled to gain traction since it was first introduced in 2009, with just 140 entries in 2023-24.

Therefore, the term Scottish Diploma of Achievement was settled upon. The SDA, it was proposed, should comprise “programmes of learning”, including subjects and courses already typically studied in the senior phase.

But the review stressed that how these qualifications were assessed should change and they should be just one aspect of the SDA, which would “offer learners the opportunity to have a broader range of achievements recognised”.

The other two elements of the SDA are the “personal pathway” - designed to “recognise, value and promote learners’ individual achievements” - and “project learning”, allowing them “to work as part of a team, to investigate, to solve problems and to look for creative solutions” through exploration of an ”interdisciplinary” issue such as climate change.

For comparison, the IB diploma involves the study of individual subjects, but alongside three components that make up the programme’s “core”: creativity, activity and service; an extended essay; and theory of knowledge.

‘A playbook for life’

Chisholm describes this core as “a playbook for life” that better prepares IB students for the future.

For example, the extended essay - which she describes as “a 4,000-word, fully Harvard-referenced research project” - helps instil the self-management skills needed for university; she points out that university dropout rates are high because school leavers “don’t have the skills to deal with it”.

Chisholm says: “Both the Hayward report and the IB framework want the same thing - to develop well-rounded individuals equipped with the knowledge, the skills and the personalities they need to succeed in a rapidly changing world.”

However, the Hayward recommendations received only partial support from the Scottish government. Its survey testing the proposals with teachers found that 53.7 per cent disagreed with the recommendations on assessment, including reducing the reliance on external exams, increasing the range of assessment methods and removing exams below Higher.

Chisholm says that getting teachers to buy into changes to qualifications is tough because, inevitably, it means more work for already hard-pressed staff.

She encouraged staff at Lomond to embrace the move by getting them to reflect on the kind of teachers they wanted to be when they joined the profession - did they want to continue teaching to the test?

Now, she says, Lomond’s teachers would not go back.

When the IB was introduced - both the Diploma Programme and the Career-related Programme - students were split evenly between IB and SQA qualifications.

The following year, the split among senior students was 60:40 in favour of the IB, and by the third year, 90 per cent of students opted for the IB. Now, the only SQA Higher offered by the school is in music.

Chisholm criticises the incredibly detailed marking schemes for SQA national qualifications that require students to “use certain words and tick certain boxes to gain marks”, which she feels stymie creativity.

Giving credit to ‘mindblowing’ work

She adds: “When you are marking a piece of work, it could be mindblowing but if it doesn’t fit those really narrow criteria, students don’t do well. So we have got this system whereby people just have to memorise stuff and all their creativity and enthusiasm is dampened down.”

Chisholm says IB marking schemes are “looser” and teachers have the freedom to reward “what is brilliant, what is creative”; as a result, it is not just students who are liberated and challenged, but also staff.

Chisholm’s critique of SQA qualifications echoes concerns raised recently about Higher history. The A-C pass rate for the subject dropped by 13 percentage points after the 2024 exams, leading to criticism from teachers and some SQA markers that the standard had changed; other serious concerns about the course have also surfaced.

A survey of 174 history teachers carried out by the Scottish Association of Teachers of History found two-thirds (116) did not believe the Higher history course was fit for purpose. They talked about students’ “rote learning” essay responses and the exam “hindering” independent thought.

One teacher said: “The exam is far too content-heavy. Candidates need to have learned several hundred detailed points across a range of topics to be fully prepared. You could not come up with an exam that fits so badly into meeting the needs of learners in the 21st century and the aims of CfE.”

Another said: “I feel like I don’t teach history. I teach them how to pass an exam using some history.”

However, despite all the evidence and the initial OECD report being over three years old, there have only been tentative steps to address the issues. Hayward, though, remains optimistic.

She sees the changes led by the SQA - including work to “rebalance assessment methods” - and the “curriculum improvement cycle” being led by Education Scotland as important “building blocks”.

Reasons to be positive

The ”slightly more positive budgetary position” is another reason to be positive, Hayward says, adding that “there are rays of hope and small seeds being planted”.

She stresses that, of her report’s recommendations, education secretary Jenny Gilruth had only explicitly ruled out the idea of ending National 5 exams.

“I’m not expecting a big bang, and indeed I would not want a big-bang response, but I’m hoping the statement at the end of January will give a clear direction of travel,” says Hayward.

Ultimately, getting the qualifications system right could have a huge impact on Scottish education, she believes.

CfE has not been realised in upper secondary because - as Stobart put it in his 2021 report - the examination syllabus became “the de facto curriculum”, with teachers switching “to narrower test preparation methods with secondary-years students”.

But Hayward argues that the power qualifications wield over teaching and learning can be harnessed for good.

She says: “Just now the argument is our qualifications system drives all kinds of unintended consequences that reduce the quality of our system.

“But what if you could transform that power? What would make us celebrate the fact the qualifications system was driving our education system?

“We came up with the three parts to the SDA and we reckoned if our qualifications drove us to celebrate the subjects, to celebrate problem solving and recognise the contribution young people make - then that wasn’t a bad starting point.”

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