Opposition parties have reiterated calls for standardised assessments for P1 pupils to be scrapped ahead of an update on the topic from John Swinney.
The education secretary will make a statement about the tests at Holyrood on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr Swinney announced a review of the assessments in October 2018 after MSPs voted to say they should be “halted”.
However, he has continued to defend the tests, describing them as “valuable to young people around Scotland”.
All four of Holyrood’s opposition parties are against having the youngest pupils sit assessments, and sought to put pressure on Mr Swinney ahead of his statement.
Standardised assessments were introduced across Scotland in 2017 in a bid to gather more data about children’s progress, with literacy and numeracy tests at P1, P4, P7 and S3 level.
The government insists these are not high-stakes tests, and provide teachers with useful information to make early interventions where pupils might be struggling.
However, there has been opposition from groups including the EIS teaching union, political parties, and parents groups like Upstart Scotland.
Some oppose any form of testing in P1 in principle, some argue against how the scheme has been put into practice, and others argue that the assessments are a waste of time for teachers and do not give them any information they did not already have.
Mr Swinney announced a review of the assessments in October, in the wake of a defeat in parliament where opposition parties passed a motion calling on ministers to “halt” them for P1 pupils.
It was carried out by David Reedy who was co-director of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and both general secretary and president of the UK Literacy Association.
The review was given a specific remit – it was to look at whether the assessments meet their stated aims: require modification; or whether there is no value in continuing with national assessments at this level.
Fife Council says it intends to stop using them and return to the system it used earlier, while opposition parties on Glasgow City Council voted to give headteachers the power to drop them.
What are the tests like?
The government was always keen to demonstrate that the assessments were not “high stakes tests”, were not used to stream or set children and were not carried out in anything remotely like exam conditions.
They are designed to seem like a computer game – a child is not told if an answer is right or wrong but, if they are making good progress, the questions become progressively more challenging.
There were claims that some children had been left distressed. However, others wondered if this may have been because the individual child should not have been asked to sit the assessment or even if it was because an adult had transmitted their dislike or anxiety on to the child.
Some changes to the scheme were announced in April, following a report from the P1 Practitioner Forum – a group made up of teachers and academics.
They cited areas for improvement including:
- Stronger guidance to inform how teachers interact with children and support them during the assessments
- Guidance on how to ensure the assessments are delivered in a way that is compatible with a play-based classroom environment
- A publicly-available rationale setting out the possible uses and purposes of the assessments to ensure they are not perceived as “high stakes”
Opponents argued the government should have waited for the review before it announced these modifications.
The government said it wanted to help teachers with the planning and implementation of the assessments as soon as possible.
Ahead of Mr Swinney’s statement, all of Holyrood’s opposition parties called for him to scrap the tests.
Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith said it was clear that there had been “significant issues raised by teachers and their professional associations” and at local authority level.
She added: “Mr Swinney must now explain to the Scottish Parliament why he has repeatedly ignored all of these opinions and has not abolished these tests already.”
Scottish Labour’s Iain Gray said it would be “an act of gross arrogance” for Mr Swinney to “simply defy the clear will of parliament” and continue with the assessments.
He said: “Parents don’t want them, teachers think they are not worth doing, experts say they do not provide useful data, but above all parliament has already voted to instruct John Swinney to scrap P1 standardised assessments across Scotland.”
Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer said it was “past time” Mr Swinney accepted that “everyone else might just have been right all along” and immediately discontinue the “unwanted and unnecessary tests”.
And Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie accused the education secretary of “ignoring the evidence”, saying: “Instead of bulldozing ahead, he needs to listen and scrap the tests”.
Speaking at Holyrood last week, Mr Swinney mounted a defence of the assessments, calling them “valuable”.
He told MSPs: “I want to make sure that teachers have access to resources that will inform their judgment about the progression of young people through the education system.
“It does not serve young people well for any issues to do with their educational capacity not to be identified at the earliest possible opportunity. Primary 1 standardised assessments are about early intervention, and that is why they are valuable to young people around Scotland.”
Content provided by the BBC. Original piece can be found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-48585137