Parents Voice is SPTC’s on-line survey group, comprising more than 1000 parents who receive occasional on-line surveys on topics relating to education and schooling.
This year we surveyed parents on their experiences around the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence and the new National exams.
Survey Background
2014 saw the first run of National Qualifications in Scottish schools. While students everywhere performed very well and we saw some positive results it is fair to say that the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence and the new National Qualifications has proved a challenging time for both teachers and students alike.
As you can imagine we have heard a wide variety of opinions and enquiries about the new exam system here at SPTC. So for this Parents’ Voice survey we wanted to gain a better understanding of parents’ experiences of CfE and the exams, as well as hearing any comments or suggestions for improving the situation for parents.
We found that:
- The place most parents were likely to get their information about Curriculum for Excellence was their child’s school, more so than from their local authority, parent council or any other means.
- 26% of parents felt that this year had not gone well for them at their child’s school 40% of parents did not feel confident that they knew who to take exam queries to.
Survey detail
- We received 301 responses to this survey.
- 40% of these parents had children in primary school, 32% in secondary school and 28% in both.
- 22% of respondents had children who had taken a National Qualification this year, 78% did not.
Key findings
Parents whose children did not take Nationals this year
– We asked parents where they got their information about Curriculum for Excellence. 82% of these parents got information from their school, just over 30% got information from their Parent Council and just under 30% found their own information on the internet. Only 17% got information from their local authority.
– We asked respondents to list any other means they had found information – the majority of responses were teachers who had knowledge already. The National Parent Forum of Scotland was also mentioned as a source of information.
– We asked parents to rate the methods of finding information they had used on a scale of 1 – 5, 1 being the lowest quality and 5 being the highest. 40% of parents rated information from the school as 4 or more and 30% rated it as a 3. By contrast, only 14% of parents rated local authorities at 4 or higher and 42% of parents rated their LA as 2 or lower.
– Parents were asked to rate how well the year had gone for them, taking into consideration how involved they felt and transmission of information. 46% of parents responded with a score of 4 or above, 30% with a score of 3. 24% of parents rated the year 2 or below.
Comments
Most of the information I have researched from the relevant web sites, as I feel many teachers themselves are still struggling to grasp it all.
I think many teachers are unsure of when children can sit higher exams if they are able earlier and are unsure of curriculum content to enable this.
I’m hearing via the head teacher that the SQA seem to be struggling with the assessment criteria which is very concerning.
I am getting very positive information from local authority ….I think it seems like a really positive change. I think that benefits would be evident if more info was given formally to parents/guardians of children in the senior phase of primary school and the S1-S3 of secondary. It might allay any fears or queries currently held.
Very heartened by the extra help that staff were willing to offer to pupils – they genuinely wanted the best for pupils. Parents whose children did take the Nationals this year
-93% of parents got information about CFE from their school. 63% of parents rated the quality of this information 4 or above (using a scale of 1 – 5, 1 being poor quality and 5 being high quality). Only 14% of parents rated this information 2 or below.
– 33% of parents got information about CFE from their Local Authority. 39% of parents rated this information 2 or below.
– 41% of respondents got information from their Parent Council, 46% from the internet and their own research. 27% of parents rated the quality of this information at 3, 29% rated it at 4 and above.
– Parents rated how well informed they felt when their child sat the National exams on a scale of 1-5 (1 being poorly informed and 5 being well informed). 50% rated how they felt at a 4 or above, 24% gave this question a 3 and 22% put 2 or below.
– On the SQA’s new results service: 55.6% of parents received information about this, 44% did not. They rated how informed they felt about this on a scale of 1 – 5. 50% of parents rated this 2 or less.
– Only 20% of parents say their school actually used this service. These parents gave it an average rating of 2.8.
Comments
Exam results cause for concern. Prelim grades and actual grades were poles apart. Trying to get any information from SQA was impossible. Always told me to go to the school. School were great thank goodness. Still don’t understand how my child could get a Prelim mark of A for national 5 art and then fail actual exam when portfolio was 80% of mark. There was a lot of confusion in information coming through from central government. The school deal with this very well, however, lots of unnecessary anxiety was created by the government’s lack of good information and in very last minute information flowing through to schools. It seemed very haphazard. Some subjects had no study aids available
I felt that the teacher’s stress at implementing the new curriculum passed on stress to the children. The children did not feel reassured that all was well.
Conclusions
- We can see from this that the quality of information received from local authorities was not very helpful to parents and that most parents didn’t access it in the first place. This could have been because they chose not to seek it out or that their local authorities did not make the information easily accessible.
- While schools are doing a good job of getting information to parents, with the quality of this information being rated highly, many respondents seem to be taking matters into their own hands when it comes to research by getting information from their parent council or looking on the internet.
- While overall parents felt that the year had gone quite well (an average score of 3.25 for parents whose children had not sat exams and 3.13 for parents whose children had) there is clearly room for improvement. The comments indicate that many parents did not receive enough information about how the new exam system would work.
- Although some parents reported positive experiences of Curriculum for Excellence, there remain concerns that students sitting National 4 and 5s are not experiencing the same breadth of education.