Study investigates the benefit of school exams

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A study into the benefits of school exams is being conducted by researchers from Edinburgh University.

Questionnaires have been sent to 10,000 British teachers in an attempt to determine the impact of data collection and quality assurance on compulsory schooling.

The independent study is part of a series of linked national projects, with equivalent surveys being undertaken in Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

This will be the first time that primary and secondary school teachers in Scotland and England have had an opportunity to voice their opinions on the ways in which teaching and schooling have been affected by mounting requirements for data collection and evaluation.

Dr Linda Croxford of CES said: "For well over a decade, governments in Britain have been preoccupied with raising school standards through measuring students' performance and setting targets. Policy makers claim the quality of education is improved by audits and inspections, but teachers often complain that they are being distracted from their real work by form-filling.

"This questionnaire asks what real quality in education is - and whether quality assurance has helped improve teaching."

In recent years there has been a considerable rise in regulation, evaluation and other forms of performance assessment in schooling across Europe, and these methods are now attracting scrutiny. Recently published figures indicated that pupils at Finnish schools, which are not subject to external examination or an official inspection system, performed better than British students in the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study.

A spokesperson for the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), Scotland’s largest teachers' union said: "While measuring performance in this way is attractive to local authorities and can offer some useful indicators for parents, the EIS believes that an over-emphasis on testing, measuring and target-setting brings little benefit to the education of young people.

“An obsession with testing and measuring has little to do with setting high standards, as can be attested by the noted success of Finland's comprehensive education system.”

Mike Pringle, Liberal Democrat MSP for Edinburgh South - whose constituency is home to one of Edinburgh's largest primary schools, James Gillespie's - agreed, commenting that “teachers are asked to do far too much apart from teaching and as a result spend more time out of the classroom than they should.”

The multinational results of the study will allow comparison both internally and across schooling systems. Findings will be returned to all relevant local and national governments as well as appropriate professional institutions and researchers.

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