MSPs pass bill to scrap SQA for new Scottish exams body

MSPs have passed legislation which will see Scotland's school exams agency replaced.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority is to be scrapped in favour of a new body called Qualifications Scotland. The Education (Scotland) Bill also sets out plans for a new inspector of education.

The changes follow controversies over exam marking in recent years, with government ministers arguing they will improve the system.

But opposition parties have raised concerns that the reforms are a "superficial rebrand".

After two days of debate at Holyrood which stretched late into the evening, the bill passed by a vote of 69 to 47.

Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth said the passing of the Bill showed that the Scottish government was "serious about implementing the changes needed to drive improvement across Scotland's education and skills system".

She added: "The creation of a new national qualifications body is about building the right conditions for reform to flourish.

"The new body will ensure that knowledge and experience of pupils and teachers are at the heart of our national qualifications offering.

"The new inspectorate body will also have greater independence and the power to set the frequency and focus of inspections, moving this function away from ministers, to His Majesty's Chief Inspector."

Ahead of the final vote, Scottish Labour said they would vote against the Bill.

The party's education spokeswoman Pam Duncan-Glancy called the plans a "superficial rebrand".

She argued that Scotland's education system, which "was once the envy of the world", was "declining" under the SNP.

Duncan-Glancy added: "A catalogue of failures and scandals by the SQA and the SNP has left trust in our education system in tatters."

Her amendment of the Bill to establish Curriculum Scotland, a new body to take charge of setting what pupils should learn, was voted down by MSPs.

In a late-night sitting on Tuesday, MSPs rejected the proposal, despite Duncan-Glancy insisting it would not increase costs for the Scottish government.

Gilruth said Education Scotland was already leading on improvements to the curriculum.

She said: "I do not believe there are sufficient advantages to establishing a new standalone curriculum body in legislation and the expense that will incur, when we already have a national education agency being refocused on curriculum improvement and supporting implementation across the system."

SNP MSP George Adam said the Bill had been "shaped" with input from pupils, parents and teachers.

He added: "The SNP Scottish government is proud of this Bill and is committed to implementing the system and culture change required to improve outcomes and support professionals in classrooms and education settings all over Scotland."

Scottish Conservative education spokesperson said the changes in the Bill would not deliver the "meaningful reform for Scotland's education system which is urgently needed".

Mr Briggs said: "The SQA needed an overhaul, not a cosmetic makeover, and the changes proposed fall way short of what is required to ensure the organisation can operate effectively and is properly accountable."

This vote has been a long time coming, following years of promises and debate and several independent reviews about the future of the education system.

But how big of a deal is it?

Some have characterised this as a rebrand rather than a revolution, claiming that Qualifications Scotland will end up looking an awful lot like the SQA.

It is fair to reflect that a body delivering exams and qualifications is a rather specific thing. There was always going to be significant overlap between the legacy organisation and its successor.

But the government insists the new body will look and act differently, and will have much more input from teachers and pupils, giving them the chance to drive change.

We already know there will be some changes to the role of exams too, with a greater focus on coursework and classroom assessments in final grades.

The education system is notoriously difficult to reform.

Councils retain significant responsibility for much of what goes on in schools, there are powerful unions looking out for teachers, and the government has no majority in Holyrood.

So a "big bang" moment was always unlikely.

And having waited years for this change to happen, we may have to wait a bit longer to see how significant it proves to be.

In June 2021, Shirley-Anne Somerville, then education secretary, announced that the SQA would be replaced as part of a "substantial" overhaul of education.

The proposal came after a report from the OECD - the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development - on the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) .

The report backed the curriculum as a whole, but said there was too much focus on exams in later years of schooling.

It said the "visionary ideals" of the curriculum - which was meant to be focused on producing more rounded individuals rather than teaching to tests - had not fully succeeded.

It also claimed the qualifications system was a "barrier" to its aims in secondary education.

The Covid pandemic brought particular focus onto the school qualifications system, with criticism of how grades were decided after formal exams were cancelled.

Parents and pupils questioned the fairness of the process which replaced exams during the pandemic.

In May 2021, Scotland's largest independent parents group said it had understood that the system to help decide grades would be a combination of course work and teacher judgement.

However Connect, which represents almost 2,000 parent councils, warned that schools were taking "different approaches" to assessments across the country.

It claimed that many children struggled with remote learning and they had been driven to "cram for tests rather than to learn".