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The Scottish Government recognises that there are differing views on the reports generated by the SNSA system. One teacher commented that “Data is incredibly detailed and personalised. Feedback will be very useful in looking for next steps.” We will continue to look to enhance SNSA reports to ensure they are well matched to Curriculum for Excellence and provide high quality information for teachers.

A small number of teachers made these comments, through the EIS survey and first-hand discussions and observations with those carrying out the assessments. For 2018-19, we are introducing a more systematic user feedback process to hear directly from children and young people themselves. At the end of each assessment, a short age-appropriate survey will be available to encourage them to feedback on their experience.

We have offered schools maximum flexibility on carrying out the assessments and there were a number of successful approaches, including through the use of one-to-one support. Working in small groups and on a one-to-one basis is part of everyday teaching and learning in Primary 1.

The Scottish National Standardised Assessments are adaptive assessments and can only be provided online. It was a key requirement in the development of the SNSA that the online system is compatible with a wide variety of technical platforms, devices and internet bandwidth connectivity available within Scottish local authorities and schools. No concerns were raised by local authority representatives or professional organisations about IT capability, in large part because most schools already have the necessary capability and capacity given that they have undertaken existing standardised assessments on digital platforms for some time.

Paragraph 31 of the User Review refers to the face to face feedback provided about the assessments at all stages (P1, P4, P7 and S3) as part of focus groups with schools and local authorities and classroom observations. These 9 focus groups and 6 classroom observations involved more than 50 teachers and other professionals, the vast majority of whom indicated their satisfaction with the reports.

This is feedback from the Accessibility Advisory Group, as well as from training events with ASN staff and discussions with local authorities. The Accessibility Advisory Group contains practitioners, local authorities and organisations involved in ASN such as Call Scotland.

The SNSA were developed in discussion with teachers and the Scottish Government has sought feedback from users as an integral part of the continuous improvement process. A number of system improvements, for example replenishment of a third of the questions, were already in train prior to more recent feedback such as the EIS member survey.

As stated in the User Review published on 28 August 2018, the assessment platform will be enhanced with a more systematic user feedback process. At the end of each assessment, a short age-appropriate survey will be available for children and young people that will encourage them to feedback on their experience.

We do not have specific figures on this feedback which came from the focus groups with teachers. As part of the User Review, there will be more systematic means of gathering teacher feedback from 2018-19 onwards. Teachers will have the opportunity to offer feedback at any time from within the system, thus providing a simple and direct means to report their views and experience. In addition, an annual survey of users will be introduced to collect feedback from a randomly sampled group of staff to provide an overview of the SNSA experience.

The Scottish Government has made clear that it will not gather or publish any data from the Scottish National Standardised Assessments in order to compare schools. School level Achievement of CfE Level results, based on teachers’ professional judgement, are published along with other school level data.