The consultation period for Professor Louise Hayward’s review of qualifications and assessment in Scotland was meant to end last Friday, 16 December, but before that date was reached the deadline was quietly put forward by a month: it now falls on Friday 13 January.
This week, when asked by Tes Scotland if the deadline had been shifted because few people had got involved in the consultation, the Scottish government played down any such suggestion.
“Professor Hayward decided to extend the consultation to allow more time for schools and colleges, in particular, to share their views,” a government spokesperson said.
“The response to the consultation has been very encouraging, with almost 500 responses received so far, and more expected before the closing date of 13 January.”
Certainly, one of those nearly 500 submissions raises a lot of critical questions for Professor Hayward to ponder.
A draft version of the submission from School Leaders Scotland (SLS) underlines its support for a move towards a system of qualifications and assessment that is less reliant on exams.
SLS is “fully supportive of a move away from senior-phase [S4-6] learning characterised by three successive years of end-of-term examinations”, instead favouring ways of assessing students’ learning that are “not driven by a high-stakes final examination system”.
SLS, which represents headteachers and other school leaders in the secondary sector, describes current assessment practices as “a series of system-generated hurdles to be overcome” that are “adversely impacting learning in the pursuit of covering course content”.
Exams ‘should only be used when appropriate’
It adds: “Furthermore, the current system is a colossal waste of learning time in order to provide learners with a certificate, which for most of them is not an accurate representation of their learning. We see the freeing up of this time and the removal of the imperative to teach to/prepare for successive exam diets as a serious incentive and opportunity for the profession to develop a more expansive, imaginative and relevant pedagogy in S4-6.”
The submission from SLS approvingly references the 2021 report on assessment in Scotland by Professor Gordon Stobart, who, shortly after its publication, described Scottish school students as “the most over-examined in the world”.
SLS “would support the development of a ‘high-trust’ system”, which would involve large areas of assessment being “devolved to schools and teacher level”.
It adds: “We see a value in formal examinations as a part of the continuous assessment process, but only when they are seen as the most appropriate assessment tool and used when appropriate within a young person’s learning experience, not all blocked together in an examination diet.”
At the weekend SLS general secretary Jim Thewliss told BBC Scotland’s Sunday Politics show that some subjects, including languages, might no longer be offered in some schools as a result of budget pressures across the country. He also said that class sizes were likely to grow and that any further budget cuts could result in falling numbers of teachers.
