There is “an almost universal acceptance that qualifications and assessment need to change”, according to Professor Louise Hayward, who is leading the Scottish government’s independent review of assessment and qualifications. But equally “almost no one” is suggesting “there should not be external exams”, she says.
At the end of February, Hayward - an expert in educational assessment and innovation - is due to submit her interim report to the education secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville.
This will contain “a preferred option for the future of qualifications and assessment in Scotland”.
It might be, for example, that the group recommends a move away from the subject-based qualifications towards a holistic exit qualification - something along the lines of the “school graduation certificate or diploma” suggested in Professor Gordon Stobart’s 2021 paper setting out possible options for Scotland’s approach to assessment and qualifications.
However, all of this has yet to be decided. The online consultation on the future of assessment and qualifications closed on 13 January - after the deadline was put back by a month - and only after the 700-plus responses it received are analysed will the new qualifications framework be settled upon.
Hayward says she has been “struck by...the depths of engagement with the issues” in the responses to date; she also says there is a clear “appetite for change”.
In an interview with Tes Scotland, she says: “The feedback we’ve had is that there’s an almost universal acceptance of the fact that qualifications and assessment need to change in order that the system in Scotland serves all learners and society well in the mid to late 21st century.
“Things are changing fast and the assessment and qualifications system needs to change to make sure that we serve these communities well.
“And that’s the universal message. It’s coming from young people and parents. It’s coming from within the profession, from most of those who are involved in the design, the development and offering of qualifications, and it’s also there from the users of qualifications - the employers and the universities.”
Later, however, she adds: “Nobody has suggested that there should not be external examinations. We’ve had almost no one suggesting that. Most people are arguing for a balanced profile - thinking about the kinds of evidence that we want to gather and then what’s the best way of gathering that evidence, and it’s going to be different in different contexts.”
The Scottish government has already made it clear that it has no plans to scrap externally assessed exams. In October 2021, Somerville told the Scottish Parliament that the government “supports reform of the national qualifications and assessment”, but also that externally assessed examination would “remain part of the new system”.
This is not necessarily as contradictory as it might at first appear. Douglas Hutchison - Glasgow’s education director, who sits on the qualifications review group - told Tes Scotland last year that the exam system in Scotland was “ripe for reform”, but that exams would continue to be appropriate for some learners, especially those destined for higher education.
Scotland’s secondary headteachers’ body, meanwhile, has said it “would support the development of a ‘high-trust’ system”, which would involve large areas of assessment being “devolved to schools and teacher level”. But School Leaders Scotland also stopped short of calling for exams to be scrapped completely: they could be “part of the continuous assessment process...when appropriate”, it said.
However, even if there is agreement that change is needed, the challenge is finding an assessment and qualifications model that all parties can get behind.
Hayward wants to “flush out” any issues with the model proposed by the review group in its interim report, “rather than dealing with them afterwards”.
She says the next phase of the review - which follows the publication of the interim report and the preferred qualifications model - will see the group asking: “Are we interpreting what you said to us correctly?”
The recommendations will be “sense checked” by the profession, as well as parents, pupils, universities and employers.
That final phase will also consider the practical implications of the proposals so that the final report submitted at the end of May makes clear what is required to make the recommendations reality.
“So if we agree this is a good direction of travel for Scotland, what’s it going to take to make it happen,” asks Hayward. “And what will the phasing be to move us from where we are just now, over time, to get to where we want to be?”
Hayward - herself a former teacher - stresses that it cannot simply be about adding new things to what schools and teachers already do, but also be about asking: “What is it we are going to stop doing?”
‘We have to be both principled and practical’
“People talk about teachers being under incredible pressure because of their workload, but I think we need to get beyond that to say: ‘What is it within that workload that contributes positively to the development of learning, and what is it that doesn’t?’
“So I think we need to get beyond some of the generic terms we use and get underneath that to see what we do that matters in terms of learners and learning.”
She adds: “We also often talk about bureaucracy and reducing bureaucracy - what is it in that bureaucracy that is taking up time that might be better spent on activities more directly related to improving learners’ life chances?”
It all sounds promising, but given that councils are talking about drastically reducing teacher numbers and cutting the school week to balance the books, how optimistic is she that the reforms can be a success?
“We have to live in the world not as we would want it to be, but as it is,” says Hayward, so ”we have to be both principled about what we do, but [also] practical”.
She adds that “in terms of practicality, it’s dealing with the resources that are available to us...it’s not coming up with ideas that are unrealistic”.
There is, however, pressure to push ahead with reform. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development review of Curriculum for Excellence that led to the qualifications review was published in June 2021.
It identified the disconnect between the ambitions of Curriculum for Excellence and students’ experience in the senior phase of secondary school. The report criticised Scotland’s “‘traditional’ exam- and memory-based assessment” and said that “senior-phase students reported an emphasis on rote learning and memorisation, which they described as ‘boring’”.
Therefore, if the system is not fit for purpose, there is pressure for it to change sooner rather than later. Hayward has, however, cautioned against rushing reform in the past.
In a piece for Tes Scotland published in August 2021, in the wake of that year’s exam results, she and University of Oxford academic Professor Jo-Anne Baird stressed that while “radical, swift reform may seem attractive to some”, it was better to “caw canny”, given the time and effort it takes to “undo the impact of bad policy”.
The system must prepare for innovation
Now she is leading that reform agenda, Hayward says it is likely that the more innovative the change is “the further out in the timeline it’s likely to be”.
She adds: “But if something is a number of years out in the timeline that doesn’t mean the system doesn’t do anything from this point. What it means is the system has to begin to prepare for the innovative practice that is coming a number of years down the line.
“In the background, the work has to be going on so that the innovation is supported before it comes into practice, rather than reacting once it is in practice.”
Change does not have to be all or nothing, it can be iterative, she adds. Over the past three years - because of the coronavirus pandemic - qualifications have been very different, she points out. National exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 and courses were modified and extra support was given to students in 2022.
That demonstrates, she says, that change can be introduced ”within an existing framework”.
“So it’s perfectly possible to make changes within an existing system but the difference would be the proposed changes would not be reactive to the situation of the pandemic but they would be forward facing to say how might these begin to change over time, and how might we begin that process.”
And while Hayward is unable to say what the interim report will recommend because - as she puts it - “this is real consultation” and it cannot be finalised until all the feedback is analysed.
But she does share one recommendation that the review group will be making: that every few years, the qualification system should be reviewed to ensure the way pupils are assessed remains true to the principles developed in the first phase of the review group’s work.
The hope is that this will mean, in the future, the kind of qualifications overhaul that is on the horizon now will be avoided in favour of iterative change as part of a cyclical process.
That idea, at least, is likely to have widespread support.
