Education - National Improvement Framework - A consultation on enhanced data collection for improvement

Add this further Key Principle:
During children's early years (up to the age of eight) the measures should include robust and reliable data on their overall development – physical, emotional, social and cognitive.

Reasons:
Differences between children from high and low income households are clearly visible by age five: 13 months in language development and 11 months in problem-solving skills (Sosu and Ellis 2014).
The poverty-related attainment gap is, at root, developmental. Therefore, the strategies and approaches adopted in schools and local authorities to improve outcomes should, until at least the age of seven, support children's overall development, rather than focusing specifically on academic achievement.

Currently, the only developmental data collected by NIF is that provided on the 27-30 months checklist (i.e. before the age of three) which is widely regarded as unreliable because it is provided by the child's parents, without professional help.
Robust, reliable developmental data, such as that provided by the EDI (Early Developmental Instrument), which is administered in schools at age five, would enable
- local authorities to devise targeted support for vulnerable children's overall development in the pre-school years
- schools to devise appropriate support for five- and six-year-old children, to develop the language and problem-solving skills that underpin later success in literacy and numeracy.

The inclusion of reliable data on young children's overall development will be of particular importance in the coming years, due to the increased incidence of developmental delays due to children's experiences during the pandemic (see CEYRIS research by Public Health Scotland).

The new Health and Wellbeing census is a welcome addition to the data collected by NIF and should be included. However, the areas it covers (page 12 of the consultation document) are not generally appropriate for the under-eights.

As explained above (see 1), early child development is of critical importance for later well-being and educational success. For this age group, reliable data on physical, emotional, social and cognitive development is also essential.

The short paragraph on 'School and Early Learning Workforce' (page 6) states that the NIF is currently 'exploring options to gain better insight into the views and priorities of staff in school and early learning settings'. Staff working in early level of CfE are now well aware of the significance of child development thanks to the guidance in 'Realising the Ambition: Being Me' and we recommend that no final decision is made on data collection for the under-eights until these insights have been attained.

The forthcoming 'national conversation' about CfE - arising from the Muir Report and due to begin in the autumn term 2022 - is an ideal vehicle for change in this respect. It would be very helpful if the NIF were to engage fully with this conversation before finalising plans for enhanced data collection.

Professor Muir has stated frequently that Scottish education should be about celebrating children and young people's achievement rather than focusing on academic attainment. Perhaps a change of vocabulary (e.g. 'achievement gap', 'achievement challenge') would help educators value a wider range of measures.

However, we have encountered considerable cynicism within the workforce about the NIF's openness to change. There is, for instance, widespread suspicion that this consultation is taking place between May and July 2022 for two reasons:
- the EY and education workforce is utterly exhausted after 2½ years of Covid and therefore unlikely to respond
- the results will be collected before the national conversation begins.

This is not to say that the education and EY workforce is not committed to the NIF's aim of closing the attainment gap. The cynicism results from the many unintended consequences of the current assessment regime. At primary level, for instance, the introduction of the SNSA has resulted in enormous pressure from local authorities for schools to improve literacy and numeracy scores, resulting in an over-focus on these subjects, beginning at P1.

In the early level of CfE, where pressure from LAs to introduce direct instruction in the three Rs is more likely to widen a developmental gap than to close it, the NIF would have to make a considerable shift in emphasis to ensure that LA policy-makers value children's physical, emotional and social development as (or even more) highly than cognitive development.

At present, most P1 teachers feel pressurised to aim for ever-higher levels of attainment against the literacy and numeracy benchmarks. Some LAs also put pressure on early years settings to make children 'school ready'.

To reinforce the developmentally-appropriate guidance in 'Realising the Ambition:Being Me', the NIF should
- introduce an assessment of children's all-round development, such as the EDI, at P1
- scrap the age-related benchmarks for literacy and numeracy at P1.

We recognise that the P1 SNSA is considered necessary as a baseline for subsequent assessments of literacy and numeracy, but LAs and school management teams should be directed away from the SNSA and towards data on child development and guidance in 'Realising the Ambition: Being Me' when devising their strategies and approaches.

If the emphasis at the very beginning of the educational process is clearly on children's holistic development, it will be easier to shift attention to overall achievement instead of (or as well as) attainment in the later stages of primary and secondary education.

As argued in previous responses, the attainment gap begins as a developmental gap, so a robust reliable measurement of young children’s all-round development is essential to fulfil national policy priorities such as health, wellbeing and confidence, and key priorities for Covid-19 recovery and improvement.

Both Canada and Australia assess five-year-olds’ development using the EDI, and the data informs provision of targeted support for vulnerable children in the pre-school years. The EDI has been successfully trialled in Scotland and is an inexpensive assessment tool - see Chapter 12 of ‘Play is the Way’ (Postcards from Scotland, 2021).

1. In terms of early years, recognise that age-related standards are incompatible with developmentally-appropriate care and education. The introduction of benchmarks for attainment in literacy and numeracy at P1 (half way through ‘early childhood’ as defined by the United Nations) created a perverse incentive towards direct instruction in the three Rs. For children whose language, problem-solving and self-regulation skills are under-developed at age five, this is much more likely to do long-term harm than good.

2. Better communication and collaboration with COSLA could also help reduce such ‘perverse incentives’. Most of the criticisms we have heard about the use of data in early years relate to LA pressure to apply ‘tracking’ systems in EY settings and the early level in primary schools. LAs should be directed to ‘Realising the Ambition: Being Me’, which is based on sound developmental science.

Collect data on early child development using an assessment tool such as the EDI, which is designed to help direct resources efficiently in different parts of the country, with the aim of supporting vulnerable children’s development before the attainment gap becomes embedded - see Chapter 12 of ‘Play is the Way’ (Postcards from Scotland, 2021).