“We’re not tinkering around the edges here - we’re turning qualifications on their head.”

That is secondary head Julie MacDonald, new president of School Leaders Scotland (SLS), talking about proposals this month from the independent review group (IRG) charged with devising a landmark new model for assessing Scottish students.

A national review of assessment and qualifications was announced by education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville in October 2021 after widespread concerns about how well the system serves students only became louder during Covid.

There were worries that the curriculum was narrowing in secondaries - particularly in S4 - and that high-stakes exams were leading to uninspiring lessons, far removed from the rich and rounded educational experience envisaged by Curriculum for Excellence.

When the pandemic hit Scotland and exams were cancelled, it proved that it was possible to do things very differently - albeit that both the “alternative certification models” hastily put in place in 2020 and 2021 came in for considerable criticism.

Now era-defining change may be afoot, with the IRG eyeing reform to an education system that has been described as “historically steeped in examinations”.

The review - led by University of Glasgow assessment expert Louise Hayward - is proposing greater use of other assessment approaches: a Scottish Diploma of Achievement for school leavers would involve an interdisciplinary project and, potentially, voluntary work, hobbies and work experience.

The group is even testing the water to see if there is the appetite for all qualifications at the same level to have the same name - something that could result in the Higher disappearing from the lexicon of qualifications after 130-plus years bestriding Scottish education.

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MacDonald - head of Nairn Academy in Highland - is supportive of the general direction of travel, although she concedes that there is a lot to contend with in a short space of time.

Scotland’s overreliance on external exams at the expense of other forms of assessment, such as presentations or project work, does not sit well with her at all, for example. And this chimes with the SLS submission to the Hayward review: it described Scotland’s three successive years of exams in S4-6 as “a colossal waste of learning time”.

Changes to assessment and qualifications

Having started out as a home economics teacher, MacDonald particularly objects to the practice of students who choose practical subjects having to sit pen-and-paper exams, as opposed to the focus being on the quality of the product they create, or - in subjects such as PE - the quality of their performance. This, she says, “is not giving them the best opportunity to show their ability”.

However, her concern about the review is that the profession needs more time to digest what is being proposed and play its part in figuring out what it is going to take for the aims to be realised.

The timescales - which have already been extended once - are, indeed, tight.

The interim report was published on 3 March; the consultation on its proposals is open until 7 April; and then the IRG’s final report is scheduled to be with the education secretary by the end of May.

MacDonald, who began a one-year term as SLS president in November, says: “I’m part of a consultative group of school leaders and we have made representation to the review group that the timeline on that is difficult.

“Schools are fraught just now, trying to get people to Easter, and we don’t have time in our working-time agreements and in-service days to do justice to [the review] with staff - and yet staff voice is absolutely crucial here because they are the ones that are going to have to implement it.”

The ongoing final phase of the qualifications review is supposed to be about “sense checking” the proposals and then unpicking “what it’s going to take to make it happen”, as Hayward stated in a recent interview with Tes Scotland. The IRG suggests, for example, that current approaches to inspection and teacher professional development may need to change significantly.

‘These reviews are all very exciting but I’m not sure of the connection between them’

However, MacDonald fears that teachers are too caught up in gathering evidence and prepping students for assessment this year to participate in the kind of numbers that reform of this magnitude requires.

There is the question of how evidence would be gathered for the proposed Scottish Diploma of Achievement, and its three elements: “subject studies”, “learning in context” and the “personal pathway”. Here, too, teachers are best placed to identify ways ahead and possible stumbling blocks in what would be a huge break from exams-based tradition, but again MacDonald is concerned that they won’t get the chance.

And she raises similar concerns around opportunity for parents and students to contribute - particularly the senior students who actually experienced the different approaches put in place when the national exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021.

“There are lots of questions around how they are going to gather those bits of evidence and record it. How are we going to assess it? And what does that look like for young folk?” she says.

MacDonald raises the question: “If we are not assessing pupils to the same extent, how’s that going to sit with higher education? What are their entrance qualifications going to be?”

And she warns that word on the ground just now is that universities may decide to run entrance exams that would run counter to the philosophy of the proposed reforms in schools. In short, “there are a lot of questions”, she says.

The danger of rushing through reforms

Another concern for MacDonald is how joined up all the education reform currently under way in Scotland actually is.

As the Hayward review of assessment and qualifications plays out, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) is being reformed - as is curriculum and inspection body Education Scotland. The goal is that three new national education agencies will emerge from the reform, dealing separately with qualifications, curriculum and inspection.

“My worry at the moment is these reviews are all very exciting but I’m not sure of the connection between them,” says MacDonald.

And again, when it comes to the changes to key education bodies, MacDonald is worried about the lack of teacher voice.

She sits on the qualifications body delivery board but there are no practising classroom teachers on it - something that has been highlighted repeatedly but never rectified.

Yet, despite her concerns - that timescales are tight and teacher voice is lacking - this really is, as MacDonald points out, a once-in-a-generation chance for teachers to shape the system they work in for years to come.

“We’re not going to get this opportunity again. If you think back to the national debate that was about shaping Curriculum for Excellence, that was way back in 2002,” she says.

That CfE was fully launched in the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008 has often been cited as one of the factors that led to it not being fully realised. And new forms of assessment - if they get the go-ahead from the Scottish government - will be introduced when the squeeze on school budgets is tighter than ever, and as schools continue to grapple with the long-term ripple effects of a pandemic on behaviour, learning and mental health.

Despite that daunting caveat, MacDonald echoes a consensus in her profession that the Hayward proposals are broadly headed in the right direction. The big concern just now is this: what happens if historic reforms are rushed through without reflecting the views of the teachers who will have to make them work?

Emma Seith is senior reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith