Global Education Episode 18: Standardised assessment in Scotland

Scotland has recently implemented a new approach to assessing children’s progress in its schools. It’s an online national assessment called the Scottish National Standardised Assessments, or SNSA for short, and it aims to support improvement in classroom practice by providing information to teachers to inform the next steps in learning. All of this is done while still overseeing what’s going on locally and nationally. It’s delivered to students in Primary 1, Primary 4, Primary 7 and Secondary 3 – which in Australia is equivalent in age to Prep, Grade 3, Grade 6 and Year 9. Now, the particularly unique aspect of this assessment is the fact that it places teacher professional judgement at the centre. It’s also been developed to be accessible for students with additional support needs. And, as well as this, the test is adaptive – so, students are presented with questions according to how well they’ve answered the questions previous. To find out more about how all of this was achieved, and how the assessment is assisting teachers on the ground, we're joined in this episode by David Leng. He’s a professional adviser to the Scottish Government Learning Directorate. And he’s played a huge part in the development, implementation and continuous improvement of the assessment. Interviewee: David Leng Host: Dominique Russell Podcast supporter: James Cook University