You may have missed it. The first phase of consultation for Professor Louise Hayward’s Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment ended soon after the start of the new session in most schools. This was a shame because a consultation about the draft vision and principles of a new system would have benefited from widespread debate. Still, sometimes a sense of urgency is worth a few corners being cut.
At least most of what appeared in the draft document was anodyne. In one sense, if you missed it, you didn’t miss much. But that wasn’t entirely true. Take for example the assertion that “qualifications and assessments in Scotland should reflect what matters in the curriculum”. But, presumably, everything in the curriculum “matters” or it shouldn’t be there. If this phrase is code for a hierarchy of curriculum content, this should be teased out, not glossed over.
One shortcoming of the present system is the mismatch between the ambition of the curriculum (eg, for interdisciplinary learning) and what the national qualifications actually deliver (largely siloed content-heavy tests). There is an ever-present danger that assessment drives the curriculum rather than being its servant, and that “what matters” gradually elides with “what can easily be assessed”, impoverishing actual education as a result. Surely assessment should value and evaluate the whole curriculum and not just “what matters”. And who says what matters anyway?
But my more serious concerns were not with what was there but with what was nowhere to be seen.
Where was the commitment that a new system would be transparent and accountable to schools (and other settings) and (especially) to learners? This has long been a blind spot for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). Seven years after I first raised it, I’ve never had a satisfactory explanation for why SQA is the only UK exam authority that doesn’t make marked scripts available to candidates. If we insist on having high-stakes exams on which so much in a young person’s life depends, the least we can do is be entirely open and transparent in its administration and not hide behind exemptions in the Data Protection Act. If that isn’t a principle for our new system, I don’t know what is.
It also ought to go without saying (and the draft does not say it) that the system must be fair to all. But we know the current system is not. Even before Covid-19, there were disparities in standards across subjects at the same SCQF level, and now those disparities are even more obvious and much worse. So perhaps it does need saying, after all.
While there are mentions of “the wider world” and the “increasingly complex and globalised society” in the draft, there is no mention of Scottish national qualifications needing international (not to mention intra-UK) comparability, credibility and portability. It was a sign of the weakness of our current system that it took the (flawed) Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests to identify that there might be a problem with attainment in key areas.
Not only should we have our own data about how young Scots are doing against international comparisons, they should be confident that, wherever they go in the world, their achievements will be recognised. This is not the case at present and we must make sure it is in the future.
In common with many educational consultations, schools get barely a mention in the list of “stakeholders” in the draft. So be it. We’re only the places where most teachers teach and most learners learn. It would, however, be helpful to acknowledge that many problems are down to the fact that the interests of some stakeholders are not aligned with those of others.
For example, the document states that qualifications should support learners in taking “the next step in their life journey”. However, Highers are too often more of a step on which a student’s life journey founders. This is simply because results are used by universities to ration scarce university places and hence additional requirements (for example, that all Highers should be taken in one diet) are superimposed upon the system.
Inevitably, qualifications are going to be used for many different and sometimes conflicting purposes. If we are to avoid repeating past mistakes this should be acknowledged in the design of the new system not swept under the consultation carpet. This would help, for example, to decide once and for all whether we want to maintain standards over time or be fair to individual learners - a long-hidden dilemma that the pandemic cruelly exposed.
I wish Professor Hayward well in her review, but I hope these and many other issues are not going to be ducked in the outcome as they seem to have been in the initial consultation.
Melvyn Roffe is principal of George Watson’s College and chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC). He will be joint host of the Edinburgh Open Education Conference on Friday 7 October at the EICC. Attendance is free for leaders of state-funded schools
