John Howie

Recent comments from Fiona Hyslop show a great deal of sense, and I am wondering if she has been handed a dusty copy of the Howie Report (1992). She talks of abolishing Standard Grades, of making a Basic Skills assessment in the third year of secondary education, and of introducing a baccalaureate in the fifth and sixth years. I hope you can make it happen, Fiona, and soon. Many changes have been made in the past 50 years, mostly so slowly that their usefulness was seriously compromised.

In the beginning was the Higher Leaving Certificate, a package of examinations taken at age 17 at Higher and Lower levels, and until 1952 it was a substantial hurdle: if you failed to pass in two Highers and two Lowers, or if you failed Higher English, you got nothing. Only the few even tried, and the majority of young people left school long before Highers. The object, presumably, was to identify that small cohort of young people fit to become teachers, lawyers, doctors and so on. The minimum school leaving age was 14, raised to 15 after 1945. In post-war Scotland this could not go on, and the first change was to give credit for the examinations actually passed, and it became possible to earn a useful clutch of Highers and Lowers over two years.

In the 1950s, the English introduced the GCE examinations, with O levels to be taken at 16 and A levels at 18. There was a welcome increase in staying on an extra year to earn some O levels, and the same happened in Scotland when O grades were introduced. However, we followed only half of the English system, and have been cursed by the "two-term gap" ever since. The theory was that able pupils would bypass the O grades and aim straight for Highers, but in practice the schools could not resist the pressure from pupils and (especially) their parents, who insisted on a "safety first" policy, and the effect was that the substantial gap in standard from O grades to Highers had to be bridged in just two terms. Lowers disappeared at this stage.

Scotland was woefully under-prepared for the increase of the statutory leaving age from 15 to 16. The O grades had been aimed at the top 30% of the 16-year-old cohort, and no realistic targets were in place for the remaining 70%. What happened in practice was that schools presented many more than 30% of their fourth-year pupils, with inevitable results. It must be said that the English had introduced the CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education), an alternative to O levels and aimed at the less able pupils. Some (not many) Scottish schools presented pupils for the CSE.

Belatedly, in 1975, the Scottish Office invited Joseph Dunning to chair a committee (of which I was a member) whose remit was to create a structure of qualifications and targets for pupils of all abilities. The Standard Grades, with three levels (Foundation, General and Credit) did indeed fulfil our remit, and we even gave the report, published in 1977, the title Assessment for All.

Standard Grades, when recommended by Dunning, were for many 16-year-old pupils effectively a leaving certificate, but we are now talking of having all young people in education or training up to the age of 18. That idea I applaud, though I hope very much that it will be the result of encouragement rather than compulsion. What is clear is that the Standard Grades are no longer a summative assessment prior to leaving for the world of work.

It was close to a decade before Standard Grades were fully implemented, and it is indeed possible to argue that the Dunning Report was obsolete by the time it was implemented. For during the decade from 1980 to 1990 there was a huge increase in voluntary staying on to age 17 or 18. The cause of this demographic change was not entirely clear, but one fairly convincing theory is that parents who had benefited from the introduction of O grades were determined that their children would do at least as well. Again (but with more excuse this time) we were slow to respond to the change, and, in an echo of the wholesale presentation for O grades in the 1970s, by 1990 something similar was now happening to Highers, with many pupils in fifth and sixth years being put forward for a couple of Highers with little or no chance of passing.

Standard Grades are certainly useful diagnostically: are you likely to pass a Higher next year, or the year after, or not at all? But both the Howie Report and the minister believe that the diagnosis should take place in the third rather than the fourth year, and both see this assessment as focusing on core skills.

The Howie Committee began its work in 1990 and published the report in 1992. Its principal recommendations were rejected by the government in 1994. Following the diagnosis in third year, we envisaged two main treatments, a vocational pathway called the Scottish Certificate, lasting two years and aimed at 60% of the age cohort, and for the rest a more academic pathway called the Scottish Baccalaureate, lasting three years. We were roundly condemned for divisiveness, elitism and many other sins of the same type. During this barrage I met my friend Professor James Whyte, now alas no longer with us. "The Scots admire cleverness," he said, "and are passionately egalitarian. Hence everyone must be clever."

There are, of course, different kinds of cleverness, and schools, FE colleges and universities must nurture and develop whatever kind of cleverness their pupils possess. It was not the members of the committee who regarded the certificate as second best: there are many occasions when a plumber is much more useful than a lawyer. We hoped that a coherent, well thought-out certificate course would raise the skills and the status of young people who followed it.

As for the baccalaureate, we saw no reason why the UK, including Scotland, should have a totally different assessment at age 18 from all our European neighbours. In particular, scientists and engineers from continental Europe are at least as well qualified as ours in their specialisms but are also fluent in at least one foreign language. The fact that one of these languages is usually English is no excuse: our mostly monolingual scientists simply cannot move freely and comfortably in the new Europe. Our recipe for the science version of the Scottish Baccalaureate includes the study of a foreign language up to age 18. The arts version includes at least two languages, as well as some appreciation of the importance and usefulness of science and mathematics. The Scottish Baccalaureate is a demanding qualification. I still think that we got it right.