§ Mr. Raymond S. RobertsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he has taken to implement national testing in schools in Scotland.
§ Lord James Douglas-HamiltonWe consulted widely in May on new proposals for national testing in Scottish schools. Responses have been carefully considered, and the Scottish Office Education Department is today sending to education authorities in Scotland a circular, which sets out how we now intend to proceed.
Testing is a key part of the five to 14 curriculum and assessment development programme for schools in Scotland. In future, national tests are to be given when the class teacher judges that a pupil is ready to move from one stage of the five to 14 curriculum in English and Mathematics to the next—up to five times for each pupil in the nine years of schooling between the ages of five and 14. Pupils will be able to take the tests informally, in small groups; their individual results will be known only to their class teacher and parents. A summary showing how many pupils had been tested, and at which levels, will be included as appropriate in the head teacher's report on attainment to the school board, where this can be achieved without 156W breaching the confidentiality of individual results. The primary assesssment unit of the Scottish Examination Board will sample each year, for moderation purposes, a number of completed but unidentified test papers. There will be no collation or publication of test results by the Scottish Office Education Department or the primary assessment unit.
We are asking education authorities to introduce the new arrangements for testing in primary schools from January 1993 but have accepted in the light of concerns expressed on behalf of secondary schools, which have not hitherto been involved in testing, that testing should be introduced in SI and S2 a year later, that is, in January 1994.
Regulations currently require pupils in primary 4 and primary 7 to be tested. We would like the new testing arrangements to proceed by agreement. To that end, we are asking authorities to confirm by 15 December that they will implement and monitor the new arrangements, in line with the circular, as a prelude to the withdrawal of regulations.
Copies of the circular have been placed in the library of the House.