Six months of work on the Muir report will have been wasted if it leads to little more than a rebranding of national education bodies, its author said today.
“Radical” reform of education in Scotland must be embraced at a national level, Professor Ken Muir told MSPs.
He appeared at the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee today, exactly two weeks after his long-awaited report was published a day earlier than planned, on 9 March.
Later in the day, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) - which Professor Muir had strongly criticised during the session - hit back and claimed that his evidence had included ”a number of misrepresentations and inaccuracies”.
Professor Muir’s report recommends the creation of three new national education bodies by 2024 to replace the current Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and Education Scotland.
When asked if this may simply lead to the “rebranding” of the SQA and Education Scotland, Professor Muir said that if such an outcome came to pass, “I will have wasted six months.”
He also predicted that superficial change to the SQA would leave teachers “very disappointed”.
Professor Muir said that key issues for the SQA’s leadership team would be whether they had the ability and were “up for” seeing through “radical changes to culture and governance”.
He also said that the Scottish government generally seemed willing to embrace reform, but that some parts of its response to his report had been disappointingly “tentative”. The government’s reluctance to include the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework within the proposed “national education agency”, for example, was “a disappointment to me”, he said.
Part of the problem at the SQA was a lack of current teachers, said Professor Muir, adding that it was an organisation that should take a “hard look at itself”.
Some issues existed before Covid, such as handling of changes to unit assessments, but problems had been “exacerbated by Covid”.
Current SQA chief executive Fiona Robertson has been in post since July 2019 and Professor Muir said that some of what she had done has “begun to work”. SQA communications, meanwhile, had been “improving to a degree, but not entirely”, he said, pointing to recent media coverage.
Asked if it would be a bad move to simply rehire the existing SQA leadership team, Muir said they should use the views expressed in his report as “a mirror to reflect on their current practice”.
He added that there is “undoubtedly huge experience and expertise within SQA - some of that certainly needs to be retained”.
‘No quick fix’ to the SQA
Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie asked how difficult it would be for a successor body - provisionally called Qualifications Scotland - to win over teachers if old leadership is still in place. Professor Muir said it would be a “challenge” and that the SQA was “an organisation that still has some way to go”.
He reminded MSPs that there “will not be a quick fix to SQA,” as it will run “another two, possibly three” exam diets, and may not be fully replaced until after the 2024 exams.
Meanwhile, the new inspectorate “needs to be a very independent body” capable of “talking truth to power”. It should report to the Scottish Parliament rather than ministers, like Audit Scotland, which would help “build trust and confidence in the education system”.
In his research, Professor Muir asked headteachers how many policies they are dealing with on a day-to-day basis: secondary heads said about 40, primary heads said 34. There were complaints that not all these policies are coherent, and that at times local and national governments are asking heads to do different, contradictory things.
On the volume of policies, Professor Muir recalled one headteacher who - in a quote not included in his report - said: “Rather than being a leader of learning, I’m now a leader of administration.”
Asked what politicians could do to help improve Scottish education, Professor Muir said: “I actually think that there is a lot of really good stuff that happens in Scottish schools, and I don’t think it’s reflected in what goes out there into the public domain.”
It had been a “bee in my bonnet” for years that negative stories outweigh the positives in a way that does not reflect the reality in schools. Scottish education “isn’t a system that’s broken”, he said.
‘A number of inaccuracies’
Following Professor Muir’s appearance at the committee this afternoon - where former senior chief inspector Professor Graham Donaldson, one of the architects of Curriculum for Excellence, was also giving evidence - the SQA released a lengthy statement at about 3pm in which it disputed the accuracy of some of his observations.
The statement, from SQA chair David Middleton, read: “SQA engaged positively and in good faith with Professor Muir throughout his review, and so we were surprised and disappointed by the evidence given to the education committee, which contained a number of misrepresentations and inaccuracies.
“Firstly, the significant amount of information provided by SQA to the review team was done at their request and with their agreement, to help them understand the breadth and complexity of SQA’s work. Secondly, national qualifications aligned to Curriculum for Excellence were developed by SQA but the removal of unit assessments by the Scottish government in 2016 resulted in a greater emphasis on exams and less continuous assessment.
“Thirdly, and contrary to the evidence given, SQA’s work draws on expert advice from the teaching profession. Each year we work with 15,000 appointees who are practising teachers and lecturers, and our independent advisory council also includes a number of people working in schools and colleges. Many SQA staff are also former teachers. We also work with a wider range of partners, notably through the National Qualifications Group that has been led through the challenges of the pandemic in 2021 and 2022 by SQA’s chief executive.”
Mr Middleton’s statement added: “We agree with Professor Muir that education reform is needed, with learners at the centre. There is a real appetite for change within SQA, and we recognise the need to listen, reflect, and act. However, the complex functions that SQA carries out on behalf of the Scottish government are not delivered in isolation. They are part of a much wider education system, and change must happen in every part of that system if we are to realise our aspirations.”
At the committee, Professor Muir had said the SQA should “take a long, hard look at themselves”, then - as a wry comment on the need to embrace reform quickly - said it should perhaps be a “short, hard look” .
In the final sentence of his statement, SQA chair David Middleton said: “We all need to take a long - or short - hard look in the mirror.”
