At its meeting on 23rd September 2021, East Dunbartonshire Council supported the Motion detailed below:
“The school system in Scotland is data poor – some describe it as being a ‘data desert’.
The SQA awards data has been generated in two different ways over the last two school sessions and neither of these is directly comparable with previous years. The last data published in relation to the attainments of young people in primary school or the early stages of secondary school was for school session 2018/19. In short, we do not have currently any reliable idea of how well our young people are doing because we do not have the data we need to do that.
Some such data comes to us through the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study, but .......................
In 2015 Scotland left two International surveys; these were the 'Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study' (TIMMS) and the 'Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study' (PIRLS).
In 2017 the Scottish government chose to abandon the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) which was both well respected and independent.
In the OECD report, published on 21st June, which was titled Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Into the Future it called for the re-introduction of the SSLN in all but name - a position it reiterated at the most recent meeting of the Scottish Parliament's
Education Committee.
This Council believes that we should strive to make the Scottish Education system the best; feedback, including data about young people’s attainments, is need to help drive the realisation of that desire.
Council calls on the Scottish Government to
1) Rejoin both the TIMMS and PIRLS surveys, and recognise and act on the feedback they give us.
2) Reintroduce the well respected SSLN, and recognise and act on what we learn from it.”
As instructed on 23rd September, this was communicated to the Scottish Government, whose response is appended for Members’ information.