Chamber and committees

As set out in the User Review, Scottish Government and Education Scotland officials held a number of focus groups with teachers and observed a number of children and young people carrying out the assessments and discussed their experience with their teachers. It was clear from these sessions that, overall, the children involved enjoyed the assessments.

We have offered schools maximum flexibility on carrying out the assessments and there were a number of successful approaches, including through the use of one-to-one support. Working in small groups and on a one-to-one basis is part of everyday teaching and learning in Primary 1.

The SNSA are diagnostic assessments designed to identify next steps in learning for children and young people. Identifying strengths or concerns about a child’s digital skills are very much part of everyday learning and teaching, as are the SNSA. The User Review highlights the concern about digital skills and in some instances questions have been re-designed or replaced. To minimise the range of digital skills required by young children, there has also been a reduction in the number of drag and drop type questions. This does not impact on the diagnostic value of the questions but will have a positive impact by making the assessment more user friendly.

The Scottish National Standardised Assessments are adaptive assessments and can only be provided online. It was a key requirement in the development of the SNSA that the online system is compatible with a wide variety of technical platforms, devices and internet bandwidth connectivity available within Scottish local authorities and schools. No concerns were raised by local authority representatives or professional organisations about IT capability, in large part because most schools already have the necessary capability and capacity given that they have undertaken existing standardised assessments on digital platforms for some time.

This is feedback from the Accessibility Advisory Group, as well as from training events with ASN staff and discussions with local authorities. The Accessibility Advisory Group contains practitioners, local authorities and organisations involved in ASN such as Call Scotland.

A small number of teachers made these comments, through the EIS survey and first-hand discussions and observations with those carrying out the assessments. For 2018-19, we are introducing a more systematic user feedback process to hear directly from children and young people themselves. At the end of each assessment, a short age-appropriate survey will be available to encourage them to feedback on their experience.

Paragraph 31 of the User Review refers to the face to face feedback provided about the assessments at all stages (P1, P4, P7 and S3) as part of focus groups with schools and local authorities and classroom observations. These 9 focus groups and 6 classroom observations involved more than 50 teachers and other professionals, the vast majority of whom indicated their satisfaction with the reports.

The SNSA were developed in discussion with teachers and the Scottish Government has sought feedback from users as an integral part of the continuous improvement process. A number of system improvements, for example replenishment of a third of the questions, were already in train prior to more recent feedback such as the EIS member survey.

As stated in the User Review published on 28 August 2018, the assessment platform will be enhanced with a more systematic user feedback process. At the end of each assessment, a short age-appropriate survey will be available for children and young people that will encourage them to feedback on their experience.

The Scottish Government is not aware of specific instances where teachers have been prevented from undertaking SQA duties.

The release of teachers to undertake SQA appointee duties is a matter for local authorities and schools.

SQA appointees play an invaluable role in the delivery of SQA’s functions, whilst also offering teachers the opportunity to develop their skills and enhance their understanding of assessment and quality assurance techniques.