Minister cancels collection of key literacy and numeracy figures in Scotland's schools

John Swinney has cancelled the collection of key figures this year showing whether school pupils are meeting the expected benchmarks for reading, writing and numeracy.

The Deputy First Minister wrote to directors of education at Scotland's 32 local authorities stating he had decided to suspend gathering the information during the pandemic.

He argued he could not be sure the figures would be "comparable with previous years" and trying to assess pupils would "add considerably to the other pressures on school and education staff."

The Education Minister expressed confidence that "teachers will continue to assess the progress that children and young people are making whilst learning at home, and report that progress back to parents."

But the Scottish Tories said there was "no justification" for suspending the monitoring of educational attainment for the entire year, especially as children are not at school.

His decision came amid mounting concern that the closure of schools, which will not partially reopen until August 11, will further widen the huge attainment gap between pupils from wealthy and deprived areas.

Experts have warned of a postcode lottery in the help children and parents are receiving from schools during lockdown, with some councils refusing to consider online teaching over security issues.

The Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) figures are usually key in assessing pupils' performance and whether the Scottish Government is meeting their target of closing the attainment gap.

The statistics, based on teacher judgment, report on the percentage of school pupils in P1, P4, P7 and S3 who have achieved the expected CfE level for their stage. They cover reading, writing, listening and talking and numeracy.

According to the most recent report, published in December, four out of 10 pupils from Scotland's poorest areas are leaving primary school without achieving expected literacy levels.

Mr Swinney has previously been accused of "political expediency" after blaming coronavirus for delaying an independent review of the Scottish education system until after next May's Holyrood election.

In his letter, the Education Minister said he has been considering whether the collection of ACEL data for 2019/20 should go ahead but he wanted to "minimise any additional work that might be required at a time when resources are stretched."

He said it would be impossible to gather the figures "in the normal way" while schools are closed and his officials had discussed alternatives with council education directors and teaching unions.

"The consensus was that, no matter which approach is taken to collecting the data, it would add considerably to the other pressures on school and education authority staff, and we cannot be sure that it will be comparable with previous years," he said. 

"I have concluded, therefore, that there is no strong rationale for gathering the ACEL data under the current circumstances and have decided to suspend the data collection for this year."

Mr Swinney said it was "important" that schools continue to gather evidence of pupils' progress but he did not specify how this would be done.

But Jamie Greene, the Scottish Tories' Shadow Education Secretary, said: "Parents are extremely anxious about the educational experience their children are receiving at home.  “This makes it even more important for us to monitor progress to ensure that children are not being left behind.”

In a second letter to education directors, Graeme Logan, the Scottish Government's director of learning, reduced the requirements for planning and reporting related to the National Improvement Framework.

He said recovery planning for the 2020/21 academic year should focus on how to reopen safely and they should examine what they intend to do to "remedy any impact that there has been around the widening of inequalities of outcome experienced by children and young people."

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland union, said: "“This is helpful guidance from the Scottish Government, indicating a practical approach in light of the substantial pressures being placed on schools during the COVID-19 crisis."

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UK: The case for school exams

If we permanently scrap A-level and GCSE exams, we lose a vital rite of passage.

Many teachers, not to mention assorted pundits, argue that UK schools ‘cannot go back to how they once were’.

The lockdown, and the resulting suspension of the curriculum, has supposedly provided an opportunity for ‘a drastic overhaul’ of education in England and Wales (as if there haven’t been enough changes already over the past 20 years). For some, the decision by England’s exam regulator Ofqual to cancel public exams this year, and replace them with teachers’ predictions, shows that an education system could be based on ‘emotional and social development, not constant invigilation’.

It seems the longer schools remain shut, the louder advocates of anti-academic proposals become. Columnist and anti-exams obsessive Simon Jenkins argues that the digital age makes the school-hall exam appear like a ‘medieval ritual.’ He asks, if exams can be scrapped so quickly and easily during the pandemic, why not scrap them permanently?

Admittedly, there are many problems with a system, obsessed with exam-driven league tables, that overly prioritises teaching to the test. It ends up prioritising technique and memory over a passion for learning for its own sake. Indeed, there’s few things more soul-destroying for teachers and students than lessons on ‘exam technique’, and guidelines for an ‘A’ grade. Even the education inspectorate Ofsted now recognises that schools should not be reduced to ‘exams factories’, and should instead offer a curriculum that advances non-instrumental knowledge.

Nevertheless, an effective way to ensure that students have internalised invaluable academic skills, from logical argumentation to scientific methods, is through examinations.

Moreover, exams can play a vital role in equipping teenagers with adult norms. They teach the young the importance of self-discipline, deferred gratification and overcoming a major challenge. And during the exam period, year groups (and their teachers) tend to bond through their shared determination to outfox examination boards. Exams are taken individually, but often prepared for socially.

Unfortunately, exams are now being recast as a major cause of mental-health problems. Admittedly, some students find written exams very difficult to deal with. This is why coursework-based qualifications exist as an alternative to A-levels. But does this mean that every student should be protected from sitting exams? A significant number of students relish the challenge of exams. That’s why there was so much disappointment among many students following the cancellation of this year’s A-levels and GCSEs. They felt deprived of a potential sense of accomplishment and achievement.

For too many educationalists, however, the pleasure some students take in exams is yet another reason to call for their abolition. They argue that the success of some comes at the expense of others, whose results are thus regarded as mediocre or worse. There has even been an attempt to reframe ‘exam results’ as an instance of ‘education inequality’. And the best way to avoid damaging teenagers’ self-esteem stemming from ‘education inequality’ is to scrap its source — namely, exams.

The alternative proposals to an exams-based education leave a lot to be desired. One suggestion is that education should be focused on ‘ending child poverty’. Another idea is to concentrate on developing children’s social and emotional wellbeing – as if there isn’t enough of this guff in schools already. Quite where learning and knowledge feature in this brave new world of schooling is anyone’s guess.

The educational radicals hostile to exams seem unaware that, in the past, such qualifications were actually demanded by working-class parents. They wanted a universal benchmark to prove that their children were as academically able as those from wealthier backgrounds. Of course, children from wealthier backgrounds would still have considerable advantages. But this motivated ambitious working-class children to work even harder.

The problem today is that education reformers either refuse to acknowledge that teenagers possess agency, or, if they do acknowledge it, they are suspicious of it. Instead, they prefer to see children as damaged goods in need of emotional (and nutritional) support. State education once encouraged young people to develop agency and personal responsibility. Today’s regressive proposals would encourage them to embrace state mollycoddling.

This supposedly radical agenda for education is underpinned by a miserable assumption: that young people no longer have the capacity to make their own way in the world. Quite simply, these would-be educators need their heads examining.

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Five Australian universities crack the top 50 on list of the world's best places to get a tertiary education

Five Australian campuses have made a list of the top 50 universities in the world. The QS World University Rankings has published its annual list of the top tertiary institutions across the globe for 2020. 

The top place to get a higher education in Australia, according to the list, is the Australian National University in Canberra.

The university tied at number 29 with the Universirty of Toronto in Canada - with the two finishing just behind the University of California, Berkeley at number 28.

The number one place internationally to earn a degree is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, popularly known as MIT.

Stanford University and Harvard University rounded out a clean sweep of the top three places by the United States.

Oxford University was the highest ranking English institution, with the famous college town at number four.

The California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, was number five. 

Researchers said the majority of American universities had been slipping in the individual ranking indicator scores, while Australian scores had been improving.

They said this was largely because Australia was earning a reputation as a quality destination for international students.

Other local universities to make the top 50 included the University of Melbourne jumping several places from the previous year to number 38.

The University of Sydney reached number 42 while the University of New South Wales followed at number 43. 

The University of Queensland was Australia's only other top 50 entry at number 47.

The list, which ranks 1,000 universities in total, uses six performance indicators.

Academic reputation, is the major indicator, which was scored using the survey  responses of 94,000 individuals in the higher education space about the quality of work done at each institution.

Employer reputation was also scored by questioning nearly 45,000 employers.

Citations per faculty was also included - measuring how many times other academics referenced a university's work in research papers.

International student ratio was measured as an indicator of global awareness and brand reputation, which is a strong point of Australian institutions.

And lastly, faculty staff to student ratio  numbers were included as a measure of teaching quality, with Australian universities slipping in this category since the 2019 rankings.

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