December 1st marked a significant milestone on Scotland’s long and winding road to education reform. More than four years after the Scottish Government’s initial announcement, the SQA was legally replaced by a new body responsible for awarding and accrediting qualifications, Qualifications Scotland (QS).

Scotland’s secondary teachers and college lecturers will likely approach the transformation with a mix of relief, scepticism and (cautious) optimism.

Irrespective of their feelings towards the body, the SQA has been central to the professional lives of secondary teachers and college lecturers for decades.

Guiding learners through SQA courses, and seeing their talents and efforts recognised in SQA awards and qualifications has been a source of pride and satisfaction for teachers and lecturers. Many also worked with the SQA as appointees, developing and quality assuring qualifications, and marking coursework and exams – professionally rewarding work which is vital for the system.

Conversely, secondary teachers blame the SQA for much of the grinding workload and stress which plague the profession. It has been seen as an out-of-touch organisation, tone-deaf to the voices of the staffroom – whether it’s about convoluted processes such as those for assessment arrangements; ineffective systems; poorly communicated and timed changes to courses; or unwieldy coursework and assessments.

The trigger for the government’s 2021 announcement was the publication of a landmark OECD review into the curriculum which found that the Senior Phase was ‘misaligned’ with the ambitions of CFE. The OECD’s findings chimed with a raft of other major reports, including the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment, which was highly critical of Scotland’s adherence to a high stakes exam system, resulting in the ‘two-term dash’, at each stage of the Senior Phase.

The consensus was that Scotland’s Senior Phase prioritised rote learning and exam rehearsal over the creativity, critical thinking and deep learning envisaged by CFE.

The consensus was that Scotland’s Senior Phase prioritised rote learning and exam rehearsal over the creativity, critical thinking and deep learning envisaged by CFE.

Whilst the SQA could claim, with some justification, that it is not responsible directly for the architecture of the Senior Phase in schools, Professor Ken Muir was clear in his 2022 report that the SQA had lost the trust and confidence of learners, the teaching profession and the wider public.

Homing in on excessive focus on NQs, inflexibility, poor communications, ineffective processes and a failure to acknowledge learners’ experiences, Muir recommended the SQA be replaced with a new organisation with greater teacher and learner representation. Critically, he highlighted the need for organisational change to be matched by cultural transformation.

The SQA’s copybook has been blotted with several headline-grabbing ‘debacles’ over the years, but two in particular indelibly tarnished its reputation. The introduction of NQs a decade ago and, specifically, the workload and assessment burden of unit assessments, led to EIS members taking industrial action until the SQA and Scottish Government agreed to phase out mandatory unit assessments.

More recently, the 2020 Alternative Certification Model, where the SQA’s algorithm resulted in 124,000 teacher estimated grades being downrated, was widely seen as discriminatory towards learners in areas of disadvantage. Under intense pressure, the Education Secretary at the time, John Swinney, was forced to intervene by reinstating the grades given by teachers.

Given that Qualifications Scotland will be performing the same role as SQA, EIS members will justifiably ask: does QS represent a mere re-branding of SQA, or will there be a genuine transformation in organisation and culture?

At this stage, the jury is out.

Professor Muir recommended that the Accreditation and Regulation function be separated from QS as it should not be seen to ‘mark its own homework’. The Scottish Government, however, ultimately rejected this, in the face of significant opposition, but not without having to commit to a further review in two years’ time.

Whilst the new Education Act guarantees places for teachers on the QS Board, and the formation of a Teacher and Practitioner Interest Committee – significant gains in improving teacher representation – they fall short of guaranteeing the teacher majority and trade union representation at the top table that the EIS called for. It remains to be seen if the new structures will enable teacher voice to be heeded when decisions are made.

Whilst former SQA staff have transferred over to QS, there are some new faces at the helm, including a new CEO and a Chief Examiner with experience of delivering qualifications in a secondary school. QS has also established a Schools Partnership Team, led by a seconded secondary head, to, it says, better interface with the chalkface.

There have also been some green shoots of a more positive and open culture of late, with SQA/QS keen to work with the EIS through a number of thorny issues such as Assessment Arrangements and the re-balancing of qualifications. Positive noises have been made too about celebrating the success of school learners achieving qualifications beyond the traditional academic NQs, with some early evidence of this on results day 2025.

Ultimately though, the success of Qualifications Scotland will be judged by its ability to hear and respond to the voices of teachers, lecturers and learners – particularly in relation to workload and assessment overload – to regain their trust and to help deliver a reformed Senior Phase based on rich learning which celebrates the achievements of all. As we turn another corner in education reform, let’s hope that the path ahead is clearer and smoother for all.

Quotes from the chalkface

“My single biggest frustration with SQA is it behaves as if it owns the curriculum and how it must be delivered. This is, in part, linked directly to failings over the years from Education Scotland in standing strongly in the space it should: creator and curator of the Scottish curriculum.

The knowledge and skills of the SQA staff, who I deal with, is superb. For an organisation with so many profound issues at the top, the ‘worker bees’ are excellent.

There’s a wild over-reliance on high-pressure, end-point assessment; exams are way too long; the reliance on memory rather than skill.”

Matt Hodgman,
Convener, EIS HT/DHT Network

“The biggest issue is workload. The work they are asking us to do for the Folio at Nat 5 and Higher English takes a lot of time and means we’ve had to shift our curriculum about. And the fact that we need to print the folios then send it to them to scan is ridiculous. It’s a monumental effort for us just to get
the work to them.

They offer a wide range of qualifications from the vocational to the academic. Centres aren’t always able to offer as many as we’d like but it is a good thing we have an exam board that has this breadth.

They need to be more collaborative. Standardisation is a strength but they don’t communicate this effectively enough to centres. Or even just to practitioners who aren’t markers. There used to be a better system of appointees or representatives where key messages were disseminated down into the classroom and they could impact practice.

The gap between what goes on in the classroom and what is going on at the top has never felt bigger.”

Peter McNally,
EIS Education Committee

“QS needs to develop a much better system for celebrating ‘achievement’ of all learners and not just attainment in terms of National certification.

We focus on such a breath of experiences at BGE with pupil interest guiding all we do, but with the Senior Phase, it’s a very prescriptive, narrow curriculum based on completing tasks and banking evidence.”

Catherine Brown,
ASN Network Convener