Scotland needs to move away from “traditional” exams and embrace assessment approaches that better align with 21st-century curricula, according to today’s long-awaited report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).

The report suggests that Scotland could make better use of technology to assess students, including online exams, as well as making more use of continuous assessment and oral presentations and practicals “as a way to broaden the assessment formats”.

That the Higher is the “gold standard” of the Scottish education system is an oft-repeated refrain. But the OECD review pegs the Advanced Higher as a better fit for Curriculum for Excellence - the review finds that senior phase students “reported an emphasis on rote learning and memorisation”, but that they experienced “more meaningful approaches to learning in the Advanced Higher courses”.

Background: Today’s OECD review paves way for qualifications overhaul

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The OECD report says that assessment approaches in the senior phase should be “fully aligned to match CfE ambitions”.

So what hints does the report give about the direction the system should move in?

How could exams and assessment change after the OECD review?

The OECD report says that a further review of qualifications and assessment will follow the review of the implementation of the curriculum. This is due in the autumn, but today’s report gives a summary of the initial findings.

These look at whether Scotland should continue to make use of the school profile, already in use up to S3, into the senior phase so it could be developed into “a school graduation certification”

Then the report says: “For the majority of students who stay on into post-compulsory education, the Higher, Advanced Higher and other qualifications’ results would be used in selection and progression processes.”

It also looks at the possibility of focusing on exit qualifications - so that students would take “a single ‘exit’ examination at the appropriate level” - but comes to no conclusion on this.

However, the OECD report does say that the use of “a wider range of assessment options” is needed, including: more use of technology to provide online examination resources and more interactive approaches; opportunities for candidates to use computers to respond; incorporation of eportfolio and personal projects for external marking; and more use of oral presentations and practicals as a way to broaden the assessment formats.

The OECD says approaches allowing for fuller alignment with 21st-century curricula, as in CfE, include:

• a more central role for continuous teacher assessment during the course, based on classwork and school-based tests.
• teacher-set and marked work that is externally moderated by other teachers.
• externally marked projects and extended essays.

The OCED report adds that another benefit of such an approach would be to “offer greater resilience where there is a major disruption” - as, of course, has happened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

However, the report is also clear that while “on the one hand, there is general acceptance that there is more work needed to better align qualifications in the [secondary] senior phase, there was little appetite for more reform”.

So the challenge ahead is not just to reform the qualifications to bring them into line with CfE - but to convince teachers and headteachers that the upheaval will be worth it.

Teachers and headteachers have long been warning about the “misalignment” identified by the OECD review, but it has taken the review to spur the government into action. 

No, there is a nervous wait to see if what comes next is in any way close to what teachers want to see. As one teacher on Twitter put it, in responding to today’s news that the SQA is to be “replaced”, there will be “initial relief and excitement” - but that will be “followed by a sense of dread of what’s to come”.