Yes, please. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on the SQA’s activities.
I will focus on actions that we have taken in response to the committee’s report “Performance and Role of Key Education and Skills Bodies”. We have taken action by reviewing our approach to engagement and communication with teachers and lecturers and using the opportunity afforded by the revision of the assessments of national qualifications to streamline documentation and the accessibility of the material on our website.
A significant feature of the changes is closer engagement with those who need to use the information, namely teachers. That engagement has been to ensure that we more fully understand how we can best structure the essential and support materials, so that they can be easily found and are clearly worded.
The documents and the structure of the new web pages have been user tested and feedback from those activities has been used to make further improvements. All documents for a national 5 subject can be accessed through a single web page. The documents are more precise and clearly worded with, for example, the core specification for national 5 maths being reduced by almost 60 per cent.
Those involved in the development of the qualifications assessment and the materials and events that support their delivery are predominantly teachers, whether they are the principal assessors, members of question paper setting and marking teams, subject implementation managers who are involved in supporting teachers, or those on secondment from schools to work with the SQA as the revisions to assessment are undertaken. Those people have recent and direct teaching experience in delivering qualifications.
A strong engagement with and response to the feedback from teachers, parents and learners remain a key focus for us. The SQA receives a significant amount of feedback on all our work, which we carefully consider. The feedback is often positive about the nature and content of the qualifications and the changes that we are making to the assessment of national qualifications. However, as is the case with the submissions to the committee, some of the feedback that we receive raises issues and concerns. The points raised are carefully reviewed and discussed and actions taken.
We also commission independent surveys of our customers and the findings are used to improve how we work. In May 2016, we published the results of our fieldwork on how the qualifications were working on the ground in schools. That identified several areas that needed to be addressed by the wider education system and highlighted some of the workload for both learners and teachers associated with unit assessments. Although the SQA instituted revisions to address that issue for the 2016-17 session, further planned changes were superseded by the decision recommended by the assessment and national qualifications group to remove the units from national courses. That has been completed for national 5 and work is on-going for the higher during the current session. A follow-up review has been undertaken and the findings were published earlier this month.
The feedback from senior management in schools, teachers, parents and learners themselves provides valuable insight into how the senior phase and qualifications are perceived. The fieldwork report will inform the discussions that are taking place at the assessment and national qualifications group, particularly around national 4.
We hold webinars on specific subjects: teachers can participate in live sessions or watch on catch-up television at a time that is suitable for them. So far, we have held 18 webinars, and a further 11 are scheduled. We continue with the understanding standards support programme. The SQA has a dedicated team that works directly with every school in Scotland, visiting schools regularly to address concerns or arrange for specific subject support at local authority or individual school level.
I reassure the committee that, although significant progress has been made, the SQA will continue to find ways to improve how we communicate and engage with teachers and other stakeholders. We have a programme that is focused on supporting our customers, which is bringing together groups of teachers, lecturers, parents and other stakeholders to help us to develop new approaches to ensure effective, timely, efficient and valuable engagement with the SQA.