Chamber and committees

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.

We do not have specific figures on this feedback which came from the focus groups with teachers. As part of the User Review, there will be more systematic means of gathering teacher feedback from 2018-19 onwards. Teachers will have the opportunity to offer feedback at any time from within the system, thus providing a simple and direct means to report their views and experience. In addition, an annual survey of users will be introduced to collect feedback from a randomly sampled group of staff to provide an overview of the SNSA experience.

The Scottish Government has made clear that it will not gather or publish any data from the Scottish National Standardised Assessments in order to compare schools. School level Achievement of CfE Level results, based on teachers’ professional judgement, are published along with other school level data.

Section 8 of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 introduces Island Communities Impact Assessments and is part of a number of provisions covering duties in relation to island communities. Work is currently underway on the guidance and secondary legislation related to these provisions and once this has been completed the provisions will be brought into force. This will be discussed with the leadership of each local authority of the forthcoming Islands Strategic Group on 4 October 2018.

There were 51,513 FTE teachers in 2017-18. Of those, 3558 FTE teachers were teaching P1 in September 2017. This includes those teaching composite classes of pupils from two or more years. We do not have a breakdown of the number of teachers who taught the children and young people who sat SNSAs in 2017-18.

The Scottish Government has not created a narrow focus on Scottish National Standardised Assessments data. We have been consistently clear that the key measure of children and young people’s progress is teacher professional judgement. The SNSA are not “high stakes” tests; they are diagnostic assessments to support learning and bring a consistent, national element to help inform teachers’ professional judgement.

The Scottish Government fully recognises these concerns and is taking steps through the system enhancements announced in the User Review published on 28 August to help ensure that the experience for all children and young people is positive. Under no circumstance should a child feel distressed or upset. If administered correctly, a child will take part in the assessment as part of their normal classwork and the assessment will not feel any different to any other task the child is asked to do.

The Scottish Government has made clear that individual teachers and schools, in conjunction with their local authorities, should decide the most appropriate time during the school year for children to take the Scottish National Standardised Assessments. We will discuss with local authorities the importance of schools having the flexibility to make the decision on timing.

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.