The author of a report that made a case for doing away with exams in S4 in Scotland has warned that any exam and qualifications reform must not “increase the burden of assessment on teachers unbearably”.

Professor Gordon Stobart - author of the Scottish government report on future options for assessment and qualifications published in August - told the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee today that if the way students are assessed is to change, teachers need to be reassured that “huge amounts of extra coursework” will not be required.

Instead, Professor Stobart argued, any reform should focus on trusting teachers to carry out continuous assessment of their students, which, he said, is something they already do.

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Professor Stobart also said that multi-qualification teaching - where students studying towards, for instance, National 4, National 5 and Higher are taught in the same class - is “a problem” for Scotland because of the demands it places on teachers.

Exam changes and teacher workload

He argued that multi-level teaching was caused - in part at least - by having three levels of examinations in secondary, when most education systems have just one or two. He also said that three consecutive years of the “two-term dash” to exams was likely to be having a negative impact on learning and teaching.

Professor Stobart - a secondary teacher and educational psychologist-turned-academic - was giving evidence to the committee following the publication of a report into the Scottish qualifications system, which he undertook on behalf of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) after the Scottish government asked it to consider potential changes.

The report said Scotland could consider “‘decluttering’ the historical diets of examinations” in upper secondary and find “alternative ways to acknowledge the end of compulsory schooling”.

It said the system could be simplified by “substituting other forms of certification at S4 that capture more of the students’ capabilities than the current National Qualifications”, adding that one example of such an alternative would be “to remove National 5 examinations at 16 (S4) and to move to a school graduation certificate or diploma”.

Gordon Stobart who carried out the review of Scottish qualifications - and who suggested scrapping exams in S4 - is in front of the @SP_ECYP this morning

I will be watching and live tweeting

- Emma Seith (@Emma_Seith) November 10, 2021

Last month, education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville confirmed that the Scottish government wanted to reform the secondary qualifications system - although she ruled out scrapping exams entirely.

Professor Stobart made the case for a mixture of assessment and stressed that he was not anti-examinations, but an advocate of a balanced approach to assessment.

However, Professor Stobart pointed out to the committee that previous attempts to take the focus off the end-of-year exams had failed in Scotland because teachers had found the workload “overwhelming”.

For example, the unit assessments that were originally a feature of the Nationals, as well as the new Higher and Advanced Higher qualifications, were scrapped after teachers said they were putting too much pressure on them and their students, and they were leading to “a testing treadmill” in schools

Professor Stobart, an honorary research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment, and emeritus professor of education at the Institute of Education, University College London, said: “I’m aware that any system hasn’t to increase the burden of assessment on teachers unbearably, which is why the alternative system used in other countries of continuous assessment, where you leave the teachers to make judgements about the quality of the student work during the course [could work]. That may be a cultural shift that we encourage teachers to do that as it is done in the United States and Canada and the like - and Norway.

“There are cultural changes that would be needed and we would need to convince teachers and parents - teachers particularly - that this isn’t going to be huge amounts of extra coursework. It would be more continuous, if you like, day-to-day assessment that’s carried forward and that doesn’t entail a great deal more work because teachers are doing that anyway.”

On multi-level teaching, he said: “It’s partly a feature of having three levels of examinations; for example, in the senior secondary school. Most [education systems] will only have one or two levels of qualification at most. I’m sure in smaller schools in Norway and the like, they will be having to do some multi-level, but you have actually got different syllabuses in Scotland for the different qualifications and to put those together coherently in a classroom - I think that is quite difficult.

“So I think Scotland has got itself a problem there with multiple-level qualifications. It takes a great deal of teaching skill, I think, to bring three groups in the same classroom through, particularly when the syllabus may be a bit different in each of these qualifications.”

On giving teachers more responsibility for grading students, Professor Stobart conceded that teachers could come under pressure to inflate grades but he did not think that would be an issue in Scotland.

He said: “We trust teachers to do the assessment right through broad general education and then we trust university teachers to make assessments without too much supervision - and further education.

“It’s senior secondary school where suddenly a great deal of pressure is put on the system and I know this is because we are selecting so we need fair assessment and we need comparability and the like but, again, other countries [and regions] - New Zealand; Queensland, Australia; Canada - see that their teachers are capable of doing this and the system operates that way.”

Conservative MSP Oliver Mundell, the shadow education secretary, challenged Professor Stobart’s assertion that externally marked exams could be abandoned in S4, saying that all students should have the “right to sit an externally assessed qualification” - including those leaving school at 16.

However, Professor Stobart argued that “early leavers often have very little to show in terms of exam results” and are often unsuccessful when it comes to attaining these qualifications.

Professor Stobart said: “My suggestion of some kind of portfolio, some kind of graduation certificate, could take into account far more and give a richer picture, even if they are leaving, of what they did in school, what were their strengths. But I would not see leaving exams that students are often unsuccessful in as a good way to end their formal education.”