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The Scottish Government remains committed to the P1 assessments, and the SNSA in general.

The SNSA are diagnostic assessments designed to identify next steps in learning for children and young people. Identifying strengths or concerns about a child’s digital skills are very much part of everyday learning and teaching, as are the SNSA. The User Review highlights the concern about digital skills and in some instances questions have been re-designed or replaced. To minimise the range of digital skills required by young children, there has also been a reduction in the number of drag and drop type questions. This does not impact on the diagnostic value of the questions but will have a positive impact by making the assessment more user friendly.

The Scottish Government reflected on the comments from EIS members and others as part of our User Review of the SNSA. As the User Review makes clear, a number of enhancements are being made to the SNSA system as a result of the comments received.

As set out in the User Review, Scottish Government and Education Scotland officials held a number of focus groups with teachers and observed a number of children and young people carrying out the assessments and discussed their experience with their teachers. It was clear from these sessions that, overall, the children involved enjoyed the assessments.

Section 8 of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 introduces Island Communities Impact Assessments and is part of a number of provisions covering duties in relation to island communities. Work is currently underway on the guidance and secondary legislation related to these provisions and once this has been completed the provisions will be brought into force. This will be discussed with the leadership of each local authority of the forthcoming Islands Strategic Group on 4 October 2018.

There were 51,513 FTE teachers in 2017-18. Of those, 3558 FTE teachers were teaching P1 in September 2017. This includes those teaching composite classes of pupils from two or more years. We do not have a breakdown of the number of teachers who taught the children and young people who sat SNSAs in 2017-18.

The Scottish Government has not created a narrow focus on Scottish National Standardised Assessments data. We have been consistently clear that the key measure of children and young people’s progress is teacher professional judgement. The SNSA are not “high stakes” tests; they are diagnostic assessments to support learning and bring a consistent, national element to help inform teachers’ professional judgement.

The Scottish Government fully recognises these concerns and is taking steps through the system enhancements announced in the User Review published on 28 August to help ensure that the experience for all children and young people is positive. Under no circumstance should a child feel distressed or upset. If administered correctly, a child will take part in the assessment as part of their normal classwork and the assessment will not feel any different to any other task the child is asked to do.

The Scottish Government has made clear that individual teachers and schools, in conjunction with their local authorities, should decide the most appropriate time during the school year for children to take the Scottish National Standardised Assessments. We will discuss with local authorities the importance of schools having the flexibility to make the decision on timing.

The Scottish Government is not aware of specific instances where teachers have been prevented from undertaking SQA duties.

The release of teachers to undertake SQA appointee duties is a matter for local authorities and schools.

SQA appointees play an invaluable role in the delivery of SQA’s functions, whilst also offering teachers the opportunity to develop their skills and enhance their understanding of assessment and quality assurance techniques.