Nursery World - Uniform assessment for pupils in Scotland

A more uniform system of assessing children's attainment in pre-school and from the age of five to 14 is being planned for Scotland. The move, announced last week by Scottish education minister Jack McConnell, is set to result in pre-schools and primary schools across Scotland using a standard recording procedure. At present, all local authorities use their own systems for recording children's progress at the end of pre-school and passing the information on to the primary school in order to avoid the problem of the 'fresh start', where the child starts school and staff have no idea of how much he or she has already learned.

The move, announced last week by Scottish education minister Jack McConnell, is set to result in pre-schools and primary schools across Scotland using a standard recording procedure. At present, all local authorities use their own systems for recording children's progress at the end of pre-school and passing the information on to the primary school in order to avoid the problem of the 'fresh start', where the child starts school and staff have no idea of how much he or she has already learned.

A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said most systems were based on the teacher assessing a child's progress by observation, although some schools had opted to test children in Primary One, which was not a direction the Executive wished to pursue.

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