Scotland’s education secretary Jenny Gilruth has said the body that replaces the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) must be “less defensive”, “less about gatekeeping” and instead put teachers’ and students’ views “at its heart”.
The Scottish government’s plans to replace the SQA with Qualifications Scotland (QS) have repeatedly been criticised for looking like a rebrand that would fail to result in significant change.
In evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee today, Ms Gilruth argued that changes proposed in the Education (Scotland) Bill would mean a bigger role for students and teachers.
Key role for headteachers
Ms Gilruth said practising teachers would be involved in the new body’s governance arrangements, bringing “credibility”, while a headteacher would be seconded into QS, bringing “knowledge and understanding of delivering qualifications in a secondary school”.
She added that for too long it had felt like the SQA was “distanced from the profession”, but the new body was “an opportunity for Scotland’s teachers to engage with [QS] more directly”; it would be “more on the front foot at engaging with teachers, listening to their views”.
QS also had to feel “less defensive“, she said, which had been “a challenge” at times for the SQA.
Ms Gilruth wants “a front-footed organisation that has the views of teachers, of pupils and parents at its heart”, and which is “less about gatekeeping, as has been the perception [of the SQA], real or otherwise, in the past”.
Clare Hicks, the government’s director of education reform, said the legislation would “embed a systemic approach to learner and teacher involvement” that would no longer be “an optional extra”.
The education bill, published in June, envisages that QS will have to publish both a “learner charter” and a “teacher and practitioner charter”, the latter setting out how it will “act on teacher and other practitioners’ concerns” and how teachers can be “better supported”.
It also sets out plans for a “teacher- and practitioner-interest committee” to “advise Qualifications Scotland on the exercise of its functions”. A “learner-interest committee” will perform a similar role.
Questions over the role of teachers
At the Holyrood committee meeting today, however, questions were raised about the proposed proportion of teachers on the practitioner committee. Green MSP Ross Greer noted that if only the majority had to be teachers, up to 49 per cent could be Qualifications Scotland staff.
Ms Gilruth was “sympathetic” to his point, responding that having 49 per cent of committee members being non-teachers would “fly in the face of the purpose of this”.
Mr Greer also called for the legislation to require that the learner and practitioner committees should report to the QS board - not “the organisation as a whole”. He said the SQA’s current learner panel had “often” provided feedback that “SQA senior management didn’t want to hear”, and they had “made sure it didn’t get any further than them”.
Ms Gilruth said she would consider looking again at the approach being taken.
Need for meaningful change
Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie questioned whether the SQA leadership team should be transferred wholesale to QS.
Council education leads, secondary school leaders and the children’s commissioner have all warned that if QS is led entirely by the same people, ongoing education reforms will not lead to meaningful change.
Ms Gilruth said that a new SQA chair, Shirley Rogers, had been appointed, and that this was “really key to driving some changes in the organisation”; new board members would be announced “imminently”. Ms Rogers was looking into SQA “leadership structures” and would provide advice on whether those are “fit for purpose”.
The education secretary added that “we need to be mindful these are people’s jobs”; the approach that had been taken with the creation of the new qualifications body was that “people will be protected by [a policy of] no compulsory redundancies”.
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