The Scottish government has confirmed it plans to ignore a key recommendation on how the reform of Scotland’s national education agencies should be taken forward, sparking fresh accusations that it is not serious about meaningful change and “the reforms are a rebrand”.
Last year, the government committed to reforming exam body, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), and inspection and curriculum body, Education Scotland. The decision came in the wake of the publication of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) review of Curriculum for Excellence and after mounting anger among teachers and pupils about the bodies’ performances at the height of the pandemic, in particular.
When it comes to how a new and improved SQA might look, one of the key recommendations - made in both the OECD review and also in Professor Ken Muir’s report published in March - has been to split the two core functions of the body, which both awards qualifications and also regulates those qualifications. A situation that has led to accusations that the SQA is allowed to “mark its own homework” and that also attracted criticism from one of the government’s own international education advisers last week.
Speaking at a conference in Edinburgh, Professor Graham Donaldson - who was also on the expert panel that supported Professor Muir - said that it was “really important...to take regulation out” of the body that replaces the SQA so that “those who are responsible for the examinations are not the ones who are regulating the work that they do”.
Professor Donaldson said that while it is possible to create distinct functions within the same organisation, “at the end of the day, there is one chief executive at the top and that creates a conflict of interest”.
However, in a written answer published yesterday, education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said the Scottish government had decided the accreditation and regulation functions currently undertaken by SQA “are best located in the new qualifications body”. In other words, the government does not plan to take forward the recommendation in both the OECD review and the Muir report that a separate body is responsible for “the regulation and quality of qualifications”.
Ms Somerville said the government had sought “the views of a range of organisations”, including bodies such as Ofqual and Qualifications Wales, which regulate qualifications in other parts of the UK, as well as the views of current SQA staff and the body’s current chief executive.
She added: “On balance, it is clear that there are significant benefits to locating the functions in the new qualifications body, as an NDPB [non-departmental public body], providing a greater degree of independence than within the new national agency.
“The creation of the new qualifications body itself presents an opportunity to make significant changes to the relationship between the awarding and accreditation functions, which will further strengthen their independence from one another. We will develop these as part of the Education Reform Bill to be introduced to Parliament next year and as part of the target operating model for the new body.
“This decision will ensure the continued provision of a service, which is of vital importance across a wide range of sectors of the Scottish economy.”
However, Labour education spokesperson Michael Marra accused the government of “sweeping the big issues under the carpet”.
He said: “This is the first major test of whether the Scottish government is serious about the findings of the Muir review, and it has completely failed it. This is a blatant refusal to follow the expert advice.
“This flies in the face of both the research and the response that the Scottish government made to the research in this area.
“This decision confirms the continuation of a status quo, which has caused many of the present problems in the SQA. With reform boards stuffed with insiders, many people have suspected that the reforms are a rebrand under the same management - this is the proof.”
Already, concerns have been raised about how meaningful the reform of the SQA and Education Scotland is actually going to be.
At the School Leaders Scotland conference earlier this month, headteachers expressed their fear that the ongoing reform would just end up being a “reshuffling of the deckchairs”, particularly given “the heavy involvement of current bodies in the reform”.
Even those on the strategic board steering the reform have expressed concern. Tes Scotland revealed last month that Graeme Logan, the Scottish government’s director of learning, and Douglas Hutchison, Glasgow’s director of education and the president of the education directors’ body ADES, had also challenged the make-up of the delivery boards.
In its review of Curriculum for Excellence, published in June 2021, the OECD said “consideration should be given to a separate body that might be responsible for the regulation and quality of qualifications, which is currently part of the remit of the Scottish Qualifications Authority”.
Then, in March this year, Professor Ken Muir - who was commissioned by the government to provide advice on taking forward the reform of the SQA and Education Scotland - published his report.
It said: “It is my view that SQA’s core two functions should now be separated across two bodies.”
Professor Muir recommended a new qualifications body - that he provisionally called Qualifications Scotland - should “take on board SQA’s current awarding functions” and a new national agency for Scottish education should take on SQA’s accreditation and regulation functions as part of its remit.
He argued not only would this relieve the pressure on the new qualifications body, and allow it “to give increased attention” to its qualifications, examination and awarding functions at a time of “already significant demand for change” - but, he said, it would also help to “restore the trust and confidence of the public, practitioners and learners”.
He found trust and confidence in the SQA had been eroded - in particular - over the past two years due to the arrangements put in place when the exams were cancelled because of the pandemic.
However, the Scottish government did not immediately accept that particular recommendation and said that a final decision on the accreditation and regulation function would “be made in the coming months”.
That decision has now been taken but many will see it as further evidence that not much is going to change at the SQA - other than its name.
