Mr. Dalton Tattan:

The Deputy has raised a really interesting point. It is an experience that other countries have gone through. Scotland is one example. It undertook a fair degree of revision in its curriculum for excellence model and changed its assessment approach. Over time, it made further changes that moved it back towards a more traditional assessment model. The experience that Scotland seems to have had is that some of the reforms it would have liked to have seen, both in the curriculum and changes in teaching in the classroom, including the encouragement of 21st-century skills, have not developed as much as they would have liked. Some of the international writing on this suggests that unless the assessment model is aligned with the curriculum and the pedagogical approach, then the sort of reform that we would like to see does not carry through effectively. We need to think creatively about how we approach things like assessment. In more recent years we have seen, either with new subjects or updated specifications to existing subjects, other assessment models coming in which would be regarded as more equitable because it is a different way to demonstrate skills and other competences beyond the traditional sit-down written examination. We need, however, to think about both new subjects and about looking at existing subjects. In the case of some of the large ones that all students take, such as English or maths, there is nothing beyond the written papers at present. Everyone is effectively sitting those exams. We need to think about whether there are ways to develop other ways to demonstrate skills. That would be a more equitable system.