School league table fears quashed as John Swinney rules out collection of detailed pupil test data

The move follows concerns that collecting detailed data would allow primary school league tables to be drawn up.

There are also fears publishing school-by-school results creates a climate in which teachers fear they are being judged on the assessments and start “teaching to the test”.

Mr Swinney is to rule out such a move at the International Conference on Improvement in Glasgow today, organised to highlight the latest developments.

He will say: “Scottish National Standardised Assessments have been available for use in schools since August to provide teachers with objective and comparable information about children’s progress.

“We have already had positive feedback from teachers about the detail they receive, telling them where children and young people have shown particular success, or where they require further development.

“The assessments will also provide a rich source of detailed data for schools and local authorities, while the Scottish Government will have access to national level data only.

“This will help us identify trends, including strengths and weaknesses in particular aspects of literacy and numeracy, and will, in turn, inform the type and level of national policy, support and improvement priorities that are required.”

Mr Swinney will confirm the government intends to continue to publish data on the percentage of children who have achieved the Curriculum for Excellence levels in literacy and numeracy relevant to their stage.

However, crucially this information is the result of the professional judgement of teachers assessing a pupil throughout the school year rather than a one-off test.

Mr Swinney added: “The SNSA data will contribute to the professional judgement of our teachers, and will provide some of the analytical information necessary for teachers to support every child to succeed.

“There is already excellence in our schools, but we all have a collective responsibility to ensure continual improvement in the progress and attainment of every child in Scotland.”

Eileen Prior, executive director of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, welcomed the move, but said many parents were still concerned about the assessments.

She said: “Just as the introduction of standardised assessments has been fraught, so too is the handling of the data that comes from them.

“We have heard from very few parents who want this to be introduced and even fewer who want the data to be used to create league tables of primary schools based on performance of children.

“The whole scheme has effectively been diluted significantly since it was launched, so that the results of the standardised assessments will be just one of the mechanisms used by teachers to plan for a child’s learning and to keep parents informed of their child’s progress.

“For the most part that is what parents want from their child’s school and many will be relieved that we will see information only about trends rather than school by school performance.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has advised schools that parents should not routinely be given access to the raw test results unless they specifically asked to see them.

Instead, results should be discussed with families as part of wider information about their child to prevent the assessments becoming the “all important” judgement on progress.

She said: “Standardised assessments are primarily for teachers. This report is a teacher’s report on the child’s progress. Our advice is that the information is then put into the report teachers normally give to parents.

“If teachers give this as a separate report - a ‘special’ report - it gives the assessments a status they don’t really merit – we are not asking them to be the most important assessment. This feeds into information teachers normally give to parents.”

Analysis - Andrew Denholm

WHEN First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a return to national standardised testing in 2015 it provoked a wave of anxiety across Scottish education.

Opposition to traditional standardised assessments stems from the fact they are often used as a benchmark for how teachers are performing.

That results in school staff increasingly focussing on ensuring pupils can pass the particular test at the expense of wider learning.

The other issue of concern is that school-by school test results make it easy to compile league tables of schools, which also creates a perverse incentive to get more pupils to pass.

At the time of the launch Ms Sturgeon said test results would be published and that, if others wanted to compile league tables, then so be it.

We now have confirmation that the Scottish Government does not intend to collect the sort of detailed data that could result in league tables being compiled and instead will look at national trends to assess issues such as performance in literacy and the attainment gap between rich and poor.

The assessments now available in schools are also very different to what some have envisaged and have been designed primarily to help teachers identify where pupils need extra help.

The computerised tests are flexible because they offer different questions at a variety of ability levels depending on how well pupils perform as they progress through the assessment.

Teachers can then access precise feedback on individual children to assess strengths and weaknesses as well as looking at wider data sets which analyse whole classes or particular groups such as pupils from deprived backgrounds.

There will always be opposition to standardised testing from some, but the design of the current assessments to make them diagnostic in nature and confirmation that only national trend data will be collected by government will allay some of those fears.