An overhaul of Scotland’s education institutions will not cause disruption for pupils or teachers, the Education Secretary has said.
Jenny Gilruth also said she is “absolutely” committed to reducing the poverty-related attainment gap.
The former transport minister was promoted to the education brief when First Minister Humza Yousaf formed his first Cabinet.
On Thursday, she visited the Royal High School in Edinburgh, where she used to work as a teacher.
She spoke to pupils at the school who are currently preparing for exams, which start on Monday.
As part of an overhaul of the education system, the exams body SQA and Education Scotland will be scrapped and replaced by the summer of 2024.
Ms Gilruth told the PA news agency: “No, it will not cause disruption for pupils or for teachers.
“It’s fundamentally important that we work with our children and young people and our teaching profession to get reform right.
“Fundamentally, a reformed educational landscape has to work better for Scotland’s children and young people and has to better support our teaching profession.”
READ MORE: SQA to appoint new chair SQA ahead of overhaul
Ms Gilruth also said she is “hopeful” recent strikes by teachers will not affect pupils’ performance in exams.
Discussing the poverty-related attainment gap, she said it is “absolutely” her target in the role of Education Secretary to reduce it.
She said: “We absolutely need to continue that relentless focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap.
“I’m very mindful as well that the landscape of Scottish education has markedly changed since the aspiration to closing the gap was first announced, so we need to be cognisant of that too.”
READ MORE: Scotland to rejoin international education league tables
Earlier this week, Mr Yousaf said Scotland will seek to rejoin two major international surveys – Trends in International Maths and Science, and Progress in International Reading Literacy.
Ms Gilruth denied that Scotland was taken out of the tables to hide bad performance.
She said “we are now in a very different place” and rejoining the surveys will give greater detail on educational results.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel