STACs Replacement Project Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool

1. STACs Replacement Project Senior Phase Benchmarking Tool Gerry Donnelly ScotXed 7 April 2011

2. Introduction • What’s happened so far? • What’s happening now? • What’s happening next? • Discussion

3. Why replace STACs • Curriculum for Excellence • Significant changes required • New qualifications • Different ethos • STACs is approaching its “best before” date • Looks and feels a bit stale • Time to learn lessons from our experience • Even without CFE we’d be thinking of a replacement anyway

4. History • STACs – Existing model • Allows schools to benchmark their attainment against themselves over time and against other schools, local authorities and nationally • Large menu of outputs allows users to select the bits that best suit their needs • No intention that everyone would use everything • Delivers to a wide audience • Allowed to grow as required to meet varied and changing user requirements • One size fits all

5. Lessons Learnt • STACs output is very widely used • Very influential • Meets a wide range of information needs • Provides consistent and comparable information BUT • It has become very complex • Its influence can result in perverse incentives • Have traded width of content against meeting specific user needs and the balance isn’t quite right • We now have an opportunity to build on the positives and work on the negatives

6. Replacement for STACS • Key issue is the ethos of CFE • We could “easily“ replace existing qualifications with new qualifications and carry on as normal • But we want to do much more than this • Need a tool that encourages and supports CFE behaviours e.g. • Individual choice and flexibility • Maximising potential and progression • Depth and breadth of learning • Challenge and enjoyment

7. Replacement for STACS • Within this change of ethos we need a tool that continues to meet the original aim of providing easily accessible, consistent and comparable information to support and encourage benchmarking • It must help us to • Understand standards and expectations • Ensure consistency • Inform self evaluation • Monitor standards over time

8. Just one tool in the big box • It won’t be able to meet all the needs we have around measuring and sharing assessment information • It will be one of a range of tools available • Our assumption is that it will focus on • Senior Phase (S4- S6) • Attainment data • Other work is ongoing to understand the whole landscape e.g. • How should we measure wider achievement? • What about general education? • How do local information systems fit in? • What about qualitative info like inspection reports? • What information is available to parents? • but these are for another day!!

9. Design Principles • Based on this we have produced the following to guide development of the replacement for STACS • It should provide active encouragement to users to be more flexible and innovative in planning the senior phase of education to raise overall standards and quality of attainment. It must avoid creating any perverse incentives that could undermine CfE. • It should be an analytical tool for all partners to support continuous improvement in line with CfE based on nationally consistent data. The analytical tool will also help the Scottish Government to deliver its own data requirements. This may not be necessarily at the same level of detail as that required by other users. • It should be a focused, leaner system which provides a core set of simple analyses (e.g. learners’ “latest and best” achievements) compared to STACS which it will replace • It should sit within the wider approach for using evidence to evaluate performance across education. This includes a close alignment to key measures for performance management and improvement particularly increasing the proportion of school leavers from publicly funded schools entering positive and sustained destinations (FE, HE, employment or training.)

10. Where are we now? • The design principles give us starting point • We are now looking to formally initiate a project to replace STACs • In reality we are already underway with CFE-friendly developments • E.g. Baccalaureates introduced last year

11. Project Initiation • Timeline • Driven by the introduction of new qualifications • Nationals 2013/14 • Highers 2014/15 • Advanced Highers 2015/16 • Must deliver these as they come online and manage dual running • Other developments being brought forward if appropriate • We will only develop the current STACs if it is consistent with the direction of travel to CFE

12. Project Initiation • Project Governance • Governance will include key users and suppliers (Local Authorities, HMIE, Scottish Government and SQA) • Aim to make the governance appropriately scaled and coherent within the CFE programme and parallel benchmarking developments • We’re currently working on what this will look like • Aim to have this in place in the next few months

13. Key Tasks • Communications • Absolutely critical • Varied user needs must be considered • Must understand dependencies to and from the project • Key role for the existing structures e.g. STACs Change Advisory Board, the ScotXed Forum • Working on this now

14. Key Tasks • Scope of Qualifications • NQs remain at the core • New CFE qualifications will be brought into STACs as they come online • Current qualification scope is too narrow • creates perverse incentives • not giving the full picture of attainment • Want to bring in • remainder of SQA qualifications • unit level attainment • qualification from other providers • This work us under way now

15. Key Tasks • Widening Recognition of Presentation • Partnership arrangements • Expect these to become more important and we will continue to support dual accreditation • Have recently completed some development in this area • Will revisit this area but think we have a strong starting point • Special Schools • Not currently in STACs • Investigating the potential to bring them ‘in’ • This work is currently underway • Colleges and other learning centres • Not in STACs unless in a school partnership • Do we need to investigate bringing these in in their own right?

16. Key Tasks • Output Design • Qualifications at exit to replace end stage attainment measures • range of potential curriculum designs need to be supported • need a consistent point to make comparisons • current design of STACs potentially constrains flexibility (both between and within schools) • want to avoid perverse incentives • removes obstacle to individual subject choice • Therefore we think we should move to qualifications at exit • What should these look like? • Highest qualification • Points based

17. Key Tasks • Output Design • what do we have now that is useful / not useful • Have started thinking about this • bring in destinations along with qualifications • Want to think about the outcomes for pupils – how can we analyse the data to be more useful and meaningful? • Analysis by deprivation • Analysis by ethnicity

18. Key Tasks • Comparative measures • Comparator schools • These are valuable and we assume will continue • HMIE are reviewing the details of the PCA methodology • RV and PV • These will be fully reviewed • PV unlikely to continue as no consistent starting point for the progression measure • RV more likely to be retained but dependent on the review • Other measures eg NCDs, time series etc • These will also be reviewed • Not sure what will emerge but comparison measures are key

19. Key Tasks • Technology • We have an ongoing programme of work to keep the back end processing tools for STACs up to date. • This will continue with a view to CFE • We will consider how we can improve the look and feel and usability of the web-site

20. Key Tasks • Access • Currently restricted to Education professionals • How do we make it more accessible • Should different users see different outputs? • Who else could have access • Parents? • Pupils? • How would we do this • Separate public tool? • Feeding out to other website e.g. Scottish Schools Online? • We will look for the results of Handbook consultation to inform this before properly engaging with stakeholders on what would be appropriate

21. Key Tasks • Ongoing Governance • Looking forward 5 or 10 years we need to ensure that the system continues to meet the design principles we’ve set out • Within the principles we value flexibility so there is an implication that the system must be flexible as CFE develops • BUT we also value coherence and a lean system • We also value all partners who will have sometimes competing needs for the system • Need a formal governance structure to balance these competing demands and ensure we stay on course • Very important to build the development in as this type of ongoing governance is often missed in projects

22. New Name? • The STACs Replacement is pretty clunky • Need a working name • CFE-STACs? • STACs II? • Son or Daughter of STACs? • Touchstone?

23. Next Steps • Continue with CFE-friendly developments • Extending the qualifications included (SQA and other providers) • Extend the unit level attainment • Investigate the inclusion of special schools • Identify usefulness of current output • Understand what we need to be doing in other areas • Wide ranging consultation on elements of the system • Formalise the project • Develop project plan • Formalise project governance

24. Discussion • Does this all seem to be sensible? • Do the design principles seem sensible? • Is there anything missing? • Are we doing anything that doesn’t seem to be appropriate?