06/01/2016 Scotland 2016

Will national testing in schools drive up standards

Pupils will be tested on reading, writing and numeracy

Nicola Sturgeon claims it will help narrow the attainment gap between

But critics warn it will undermine teachers.

As the Scottish Parliament takes on more tax-raising powers,

who should judge if the money's being well-managed?

the Office for Budget Responsibility.

And the new Chief Constable of Police Scotland says he'll put

more armed officers on the streets if the terror threat rises.

Scotland lays claim to a long and proud tradition in education.

But the First Minister has made driving up standards in schools one

Nicola Sturgeon wants to close the attainment gap between

children from poorer and better-off backgrounds.

Today, she's announced plans for new national tests.

They'll be piloted later this year, and introduced

Laura Maxwell has been looking at the plans.

These are perhaps the only children and the country who are pleased

about the plans for more tests. But then they were at the launch of the

new National Improvement Framework. It will see standardised national

testing in reading, writing and numeracy. Peoples will be assessed

in primaries one, four and seven. And again at secondary school.

An education is a rate that we ought to every single young person in our

country. The First Minister made the

announcement at a national education conference in Glasgow were she

promised to close the gap. This fundamentally is about

improving education for children saw a teacher will now if each elders

doing well or if they are struggling and need help. It will feed into

data on teacher judgment that we publish that will allow us to look

at the picture across the country to help formulate government policy to

close that attainment gap. Standardised testing has already

been and gone. School league tables and performance

tests for 5-14 -year-olds are to end.

It was scrapped back in 2003 by the Lib Dem coalition. Since then, local

authorities have used different systems which cannot be compared

like for like. You would think some form of national benchmark would be

welcomed but of course opposition parties are not convinced.

No framework will ever close that attainment gap in our schools. What

will close the attainment gap is adequate resources targeted

properly. That is why Scottish Labour want a bigger fund that

follows children from poor families whenever they go to school.

We are not convinced that this should the top of the list. What

about making sure we have enough additional support teachers? Or

reducing ever-growing class sizes? Or reducing the work of teachers?

This is a throwback to the days of Margaret Thatcher. The days of

national testing that will inevitably leads to leak tables --

league tables. This won't help teachers improve the performance of

peoples, it will just set it back. The Conservatives have welcomed the

new tests. This is about insuring consistency

and best actor so there is better quality rather than more testing. We

always have the question of league tables but if we have good teaching

there is nothing to be frightened of.

The Scottish Government says the percentage of pupils Regini required

levels of literacy and numeracy will be published nationally as well as

by a local authority. Crucially, those figures will rely entirely on

results of tests. Teacher judgment will also play a large part.

We are pleased that the Scottish Government seems to listen to our

advice. That in itself offers some protection against league tables.

The most important question of all, what do you want? Because the

curriculum was supposed to be about teaching, not testing. Well these

moves helped make Scotland a world leader in education or Crickmore

problems? -- create more problems. We're joined now from Edinburgh

by Professor Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Education Policy

at Edinburgh University, and Keir Bloomer,

an independent education consultant and Chair of the Commission

on School Reform. What do you make of the plan?

It is interesting and being able to compare different people in

different parts of the country is useful. People who complain about

evidence because they want improvement are providing no

alternative. What do you make of it?

Testing itself doesn't drive up standards but it does let us know

how the current system is operating, whether it is improving or not. So

we will not make improvements unless we have the evidence base upon which

policy can be determined and it seems to me that this is a step

forward. So you are both in broad agreement

on that. The outcome of these tests will be subject to what is called

teacher judgment. What do you understand that to mean?

It seems like a lot of political spinning was going on today and we

are not clear what will be published. It is clear from the

First Minister speech that results will be based on the percentage of

children that have reached certain medals. It means there is

relationship between test results and the curriculum. But the general

secretary of the EIS said he expects percentages not to be published in

that form but some to be fault of the roof some rather mystical

concept called teacher judgment. So there is a lot to be clarified. If

results are being collected by schools and local authorities, it is

not the vehicle before local newspapers to exercise freedom of

information and get the data anyway. It is quite metaphysical because it

will be in public domain in due course.

Just returning to that issue of teacher judgment, do you foresee the

prospect that teachers will be given the chance to cover up earlier if

there is that sort of sifting mechanism?

As has been said, it is not entirely clear what will be published for

what the rules will be so -- surrounding the evidence. We don't

know whether or not there are will be any kind of framework upon which

teacher judgment have to be framed. But it does look that what will be

put in the public domain is some kind of combination of the outcome

of the National assessment and teachers' views on how the child is

progressing. It seems to me that the value of these tests is in

monitoring the progress of the system and that is about publication

of national statistics and to a lesser extent local statistics. The

publication of statistics on those levels does not carry any particular

risks with that. More CDs so, is the publishing of school level

information. It looks on the government has gone for some kind of

compromise and it is not clear to me what value will be attached to that

combination of teacher judgment and test results.

The First Minister wants to drive up standards. Is this a starting point

or a sideshow? Neither because in itself it is

nothing at all but a necessary part of it. Has to be strategy and policy

in place to approve containment -- achieve improvement. There is still

an enormous vacuum. Where are we going to get experimental policies

and the possibility of trying out different approaches to tackle the

attainment gap or other issues facing Scottish education? Although

there have been lots of find words -- fine words spoken by various

parties, there is little in the way of radical thought. The Scottish

Conservatives did carried some radical other day and maybe double

stimulate debate but there has been very little day thinking on -- new

thinking on improving qualities of attainment.

What would you do to narrow this attainment gap that all the

politicians are concerned about? The attainment gap is very

long-standing. There has been concern for at least half a century.

Virtually every education body has had narrowing the gap as a challenge

over that time. This is an intractable problem. The present

government has an aspiration to raise standards for everybody and at

the same time to narrow the gap. Combining those two is difficult

because if you do both simultaneously then standards at the

bottom end I going to have to rise at a rate that we have never

achieved in the past. The question is how you can combine standards

that apply to everyone overall with something that is additional and

special and effective and targeted at individuals who most need it. At

the present moment, policy is not clear.

So what is this silly? We know that getting -- so what is

necessary? It is not just about resources and

probably not even importantly so. It is about the quality of teaching and

learning and working with communities. What we lack is an

overall strategy. We must leave it there. Thank you

both. Now, the Scottish

Parliament is changing. It's taking on more

tax-raising powers. That brings with it

the need for oversight by a spending watchdog to make sure

the money is spent wisely. We already have the independent

Office for Budget Responsibility, set up by the UK Government

five years ago, to scrutinise Its numbers are quoted

by the Chancellor in his budgets. But there's another one -

the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Set up 18 months ago,

to provide scrutiny of the Scottish Government's

forecasts for devolved taxes. And some want its remit to be

widened so it produces the official forecasts for all

future devolved taxes. Earlier today, I caught up

Robert Chote, who's chairman of the Office for

Budget Responsibility, and I began by asking him how

the OBR remained independent, If they want to put those views

forward, I am relaxed about that, but at the end of the day, I and my

two colleagues have a responsibility to deliver the best forecast that we

can, explaining the uncertainties that lie around it, but the

responsibilities are clear. We produce our best view and it is up

to ministers to use our forecast to do their policies on the bases of

another one. These forecasts, it is difficult to get it right. You are

attacked in the run-up to the independence referendum for

publishing the lowest of the oil revenue. It ended up being

overoptimistic. You don't always get it right, do you? Nobody does.

Absolutely not and no policy maker should set policy on figures being

right. But argument I was making is that not that I'm confident that our

forecasts will be more accurate than those of the Scottish Government or

any one else, but look at the record. Look how big the forecast

changes have had to be in the past. Oil receipts are about seven times

more volatile than the 80 receipts. Policymakers need to take into

account not just your best view, but the realistic confidence they can

put into that. Certainly it will be hubris to think that you will get

these things right. We talked about political pressure, what is

necessary when we are talking about the setting up of a Scottish Fiscal

Commission to ensure it is at arm's-length and it is independent,

truly independent? Obviously the legal underpinning and the nature of

the agreements that are reached between the fiscal commission, the

government, revenue Scotland with coming up with taxes. It is good to

have the rules of the game set out clearly so if things go awry, you

can point back to the rules and said, this is unacceptable and

things need to change. For example, whether you are being given the

access to the information you need to do the forecast. But the reality

is it is in the way in which you conduct yourself and your partners

in this exercise conduct themselves, week in, week out, that actually

works. The personalities matter as well, but that is not to say the

legal underpinning, the other administrative underpinning is

important, but at the end of the day, a lot depends on people on both

sides of the table having a sensible working relationship. Not being

sober nicotine that you expect everyone to behave perfectly all of

the time, but knowing what is acceptable and unacceptable and

sticking to it. Looking ahead, the Scottish Parliament's hours are

changing. It is getting more tax powers, but that comes with risks

attached to it. From your view, I wonder, how much of the challenge is

therefore most peas, the Scottish Government to change their mind set

about moving from being a spending Parliament and a spending government

to one that raises money and a parliament that raises money as

well. What are the pitfalls? As more of those decisions are devolved, it

is recognising that you are having to make judgments over a wider range

of issues. For example, over how buoyant tax receipts are going to

be. The key issue is not just to come up with an estimate, but to

recognise there will be uncertainties around those estimates

and you need to set policy recognising that and being alert to

what happens if the forecast is wrong in one direction of the other.

There can be some errors you make that don't matter much for the

bottom line, but there will be others that do. Those decisions for

policymakers to make, but the those of us providing the numbers, whether

it is the fiscal commission or anyone else, providing rich

information that helps Parliament and the politicians to recognise

uncertainties is the best contribution you can make. We are

likely to get new income tax powers over the next New Year 's. I wonder

with the direction of travel apparently heading towards higher

rate tax payers bearing a good burden of tax in Scotland in the

future, that seems to be the way the political parties are going. I

wonder whether you have a view on whether we can learn any lessons

from what has happened across the UK? Are there unintended

consequences we should be aware of? If you do end up with higher tax

rates in part of the United Kingdom and others, there are two issues

that come to the fore. The first of which is predicting what behavioural

response there will be. If you have a higher tax rate in Scotland

relative to the rest of the UK, the insensitive of a person -- the

incentive for a person to identify them as Scottish gets greater. The

larger the difference between the rest of the UK rates and the

Scottish rate, the more of a challenge it will be. For both us,

the Scottish Government and the Scottish Fiscal Commission there is

not clear evidence to say how big those behavioural responses are

likely to be and I suspect for all of it will be a question of lick

your finger, stick it up, see what direction the wind is blowing. There

will be huge uncertainties. The second issue is if you have,

particularly in a Scottish context, a change in those tax rates that is

announced well ahead of it taking place, that lesson of the changes in

the higher rate of income tax in the UK when we went from 40 to 50, at

240 5p, is if you pre-announced those things, you are dealing with a

part of the population that is relatively able compared to those of

us on normal wages and salaries to choose in which year you take

income. If you have a high income tax rates coming down the road, the

incentive is to take your income early. If it is cut, the incentive

is to take it later. The amount of money that can be moved across the

year to year is very big and it makes understanding what is going on

with the underlying health of the income tax position that more

difficult. We have seen that on a smaller scale here with the

introduction of LB TT. That was preannounced and you have seen a

discouragement to relatives of high level transactions when the rate

goes up and different effects at lower levels as well. So both the

question of what the long-term behavioural effects will be and

whether the pre-announcement of the major causes distortions will be

headaches for us and anyone else trying to forecast these things. I

week -- as we are looking to more tax powers shifting from West

Munster to Holyrood -- Westminster to Holyrood, the political framework

seems deadlocked. It seems the Treasury wants to continue setting

the rules and the Scottish Government simply will not accept

Smith Commission powers if the framework is not right. I wonder, is

there the need for an independent judge of what is fair, or an appeal

for which can decide whether the outcome of a particular year's

allocation has been fairly allocated? What do you think? If you

are in an environment where you end up with potential disputes over the

fairness of the political set of decisions overspending or taxation

whatever it be, whether Scotland is using treated fairly relative to

other nations in the UK, you how to ask whether that is the sort of

issue that a technocrat ik body like ours can sensibly be given, or at

the end of the day is it simply political and you have to go back?

Take the example of an independent committee being set up to decide

whether or where there should be another runway in South is England.

You can come up with a technocrat ik view, but it comes back to a

political decision as to who the winners and losers are. I am

relatively sceptical about having technocrats dealing with issues that

are too political. Technocratic bodies are better dealing with

bodies that are not political, coming up with the best forecast

rather than deciding who will win or lose. Obstinately politicians have

to get together and agree? That is the case. If you have independent

analyses that come provide the evidence base that both sides can

reach decisions on, but deciding who should win or lose in a particular

judgment is a difficult if not impossible one. Thank you very much

indeed. Now, today saw the first episode

of the year of that long-running Today, a new story line emerged

with the SNP's Angus Robertson attacking David Cameron,

over the looming threat of strike action by junior

doctors in England. Angus Robertson. The Scottish

Government has been investing record levels of funding in the NHS in

Scotland and works hard to have the best possible relations with the

doctors and nurses and NHS staff. With two will be Home Secretary

speak to his Scottish counterpart to stave off any form of industrial

action. There should always be good relations between the Health

Secretary and health ministers in the devolved administrations. When

we make a decision to increase funding in the NHS as we have done,

?19 billion more in this Parliament, that has consequences for Wales and

Scotland and Northern Ireland under the Barnett formula and I find it

very depressing that the Welsh have decided under Labour to spend less

than we are planning to spend and Scotland has done the same thing.

Well, joining me in the studio are the journalists David Leask

Thank you for joining us. As we saw there, Pennie, Angus Robertson

making political capital about junior doctors in Scotland not

striking and a strike is looming. Was a move, making a direct

comparison? Junior doctors in Scotland are not going on strike

next week as they are in England, but Scotland has no room for

complacency as far as our health and care services go. Over the last year

or so they have been warnings of ?450 million shortfall is in

Scotland. We have had audit Scotland saying that things are per Kerry is.

We have had the one medical colleges and the Royal College of Nursing

saying change as to happen all the way that we operate is not

sustainable. Actually, saying there is record levels of spending in

Scotland is another kind that can certainly be analysed. England has

spent a far higher percentage on health than Scotland has over recent

years. Yes indeed and this disputes with junior doctors is because the

English NHS wants to move to a seven-day week service. We are not

doing that here, are we? We are not. I have been doing a lot of

interviews recently with defeated Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs may

have been saying the same thing, how does the SNP managed to be an

opposition and a government at the same time? We just saw Angus

Robertson doing that. We are comparing our services with those in

England. Tomorrow marks a year since the attack on the French magazine

Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The gunmen shot dead of people. The Scottish

Government is planning to mark the day. The new Scottish Chief

Constable says he would deploy more officers if the threat from

terrorism deemed impossible. David, what more did he have to say? This

is a familiar line from policing, that if the terror threat is high up

we will have two adapts to it. There are a lot of myths regarding armed

policing. A lot of us think that there are more armed police around,

but they aren't -- but there aren't, they are just more visible. When

they are armed, do they do normal duties? Do they wait around in cars

to see if there will be some horrible Paris style attack? If you

put more effort into that, we have a budget crisis in the police system,

can you do the things you want to do? There will be people who say,

here we go again. Stephen house tried to introduce more armed police

on the beat. Will this be more of the same? The problem with the

earlier incident is that it was not that transparent. Photographs

started circulating of armed police in supermarket aisles. The

difference would be that if it was very transparent because frankly, I

then see any point having armed police who are not very visible

because you would want to know that there are armed police out there if

that is the way you went. It does concern me that there would be some

blanket go-ahead for it because as you have said, David, I would want

to know, for instance, if a car spun off the motorway that someone would

not have to live there for three days before they were picked up,

even though it was reported to the police. There are fundamental police

issues that need addressing as well. You spoke to the Chief Constable.

Did you get the impression that he was keen to put bums on police

officers, or is it a last resort? My impression was that he was in

thinking mode. He was trying to understand what the needs of

policing in Scotland are. He did give me the bridge and that he was

rushing to make any judgments. Let's move on to something more

light-hearted. A new shock jock is taking to the airwaves. Alex Salmond

is to host his own radio phone in show. Let us take a look at him in

action. He is reading some tweets about himself. I wish I had a

machine that could zap Alex Salmond 's voice when he is on the radio. It

is called the off switch. The Alex Salman phoneme. Pennie, would that

make you tuning? Certainly for the novelty will. He says he is going to

shoot from the hip. I suspect it will be more shooting from the lip.

He is in good company. That radio station has Boris Johnson and Nigel

barrage. He can be quite blunt, a good starting point for a shock

jock. I wonder how much Nicola Sturgeon is looking forward to him

shooting from the hip. If they've been robbed of thousand of us had

voted differently, this man could be the leader of a sovereign state.

Instead he is doing some slightly embarrassing radio show. Is he in

good company? Nick Clegg, Tommy Sheridan. Let us see how he does.

The proof will be in the listeners. And you will be tuning in? Perhaps.

He could do off the ball. He was quite good at that. Thank you very

much indeed. Shelley will be back at the same

time tomorrow night. The link between the cars

we choose to drive, air pollution and ill-health is under

greater scrutiny than ever before.