2. Can the First Minister give us another word for a hummingbird’s beak?

Not immediately, no.

That is rather unfortunate, because the hummingbird’s beak question is one of the Government’s standardised assessment literacy questions for five-year-olds. Little wonder that Scotland’s teachers have told me how young and confident children are crushed by those tests. There have been reports of children being driven to tears. The educational charity Upstart Scotland says that the tests are not only “pointless” and “highly counterproductive”, but, worse, they are an “adverse childhood experience”, and yet, at the Scottish National Party conference six days ago, John Swinney claimed

“a renaissance in Scottish education”.

What kind of renaissance is it that includes five-year-olds being driven to tears?

The First Minister:

I do not know what Richard Leonard was doing yesterday—perhaps he can tell us later. Yesterday morning, I spent time in two primary schools, as well as a secondary school and an early years centre—all part of the fantastic new Largs campus—which make up some of the more than 750 schools that have been built or modernised under this Government. I talked to a range of primary school children, including some five-year-olds. I did not meet any who were in tears or see any who looked crushed. I saw confident, bright and enthusiastic young people.

Some of those primary school children showed me computer coding and others were speaking Mandarin to me—that is how confident they were. Others took me outside to show me what they were doing in their outdoor nursery. They were confident young people showing the best of Scottish education. It is shameful for Richard Leonard to come to the chamber and talk about our young people in the way that he just has.

Let me also say this: we are determined, as I have said on so many occasions, to continue to raise standards in our schools and to close the attainment gap. Being able to assess in an appropriate and age-appropriate way how our young people are doing in school is an important part of that. We will continue to work hard to make sure that we do that, in a way that is entirely appropriate. I am proud of what I saw in Largs yesterday and I am proud of what is happening across Scottish education.

These tests have been flawed from the very start. They were delivered late, £2 million over budget and cause weeks of valuable teaching time to be lost. This morning, I spoke to a primary 1 teacher from Edinburgh. She is in school every day of the week and she said:

“Administering these tests to our 54 primary 1 children took approximately 30 hours of teacher time for numeracy and 40 hours for literacy.”

She continued:

“Having watched the children complete the tests ... I also have no confidence in the validity of the assessment. ... I cannot use the data from these tests to support my teaching in any way. It does not provide reliable information on any aspect of my children’s learning or development.”

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills once promised that teachers could stop doing anything that did not support learning. First Minister, will you stop standardised testing for five-year-olds now and put pupils first?

The First Minister:

We will continue to listen to teachers and to consider the feedback of teachers.

You do not listen.

You do not.

We now have some Constituency supplementaries, the first of which is from Finlay Carson.

The First Minister:

Perhaps Labour will listen to the answer. It is because we listened to teachers before the assessments were introduced that we took the decision not to insist that they were carried out at a particular point of the year. Teachers can use their judgment and discretion around that.

Almost 600,000 assessments have been successfully carried out so far. As I understand it, the vast Majority of teacher feedback has been positive about the depth of the diagnostic information available. The assessments are not high-stakes assessments; there is not a pass or a fail for them. They are one part of a range of evidence that a teacher will gather on the progress of a child or young person.

I do not know about Richard Leonard, but I think that it is right that we are able to assess the progress of children in our schools. At a fundamental level, if we do not know how our young people are performing, how can we make sure that we are taking action to improve standards in our schools?

We have been very clear that teacher judgment continues to be the priority, but this is another area in which teachers can inform that judgment. We are determined that we will continue to raise standards and close the attainment gap.

Week after week, we hear members on the Labour benches calling for that to be done, but they manage to oppose almost everything that we do to bring it about. It is about willing the ends but not having the ability or the courage to will the means. We are determined to take the action, not just talk the talk, as Labour so often does.