This assessment was commissioned jointly by the Scottish Government and Parliament. The OECD team is indebted to John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills in the Scottish Government, for his support throughout the assessment process, and to Clare Adamson, Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and Convener of the Education and Skills Committee of the Scottish Parliament, for the Committee’s availability to engage as part of the assessment. We are grateful for the invaluable support, contributions and guidance from the Scottish Government Learning Directorate officials and staff. In particular, the team would like to thank Julie Anderson, Maggie Young, and Anna Stansfield of the Learning Directorate for co-ordinating the process.
The assessment benefitted from the contributions of the officials and education experts from across Scotland’s education system, who shared their knowledge with the OECD team during the assessment and provided feedback on this report. We would like to particularly acknowledge the valuable contributions and feedback provided by the members of the Scottish Practitioner Forum. We are also grateful for the contributions of officials from governance committees and advisory boards, public agencies, and local authorities and Regional Improvement Collaboratives.
The OECD team thanks all the participants in the assessment visits (see Annex B), starting with the headteachers, teachers, students and parents of the schools who made time to meet with us during a challenging school year. We thank the scholars, researchers, non-governmental organisations, unions and professional associations, and all the bodies and individuals who kindly shared their views, experience and knowledge with us. The courtesy extended to us throughout our virtual visits to Scotland (United Kingdom) always made these challenging visits the more instructive and enjoyable.
The OECD team who conducted the assessment and co-authored this report was composed of Beatriz Pont, Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD, Romane Viennet, Policy Analyst at the OECD, Professor Anne Looney, Executive Dean of Dublin City University’s Institute of Education, and Professor Jan van den Akker, University of Twente (Annex A). The OECD team acknowledges the support from the OECD Secretariat, and particularly from Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills; Paulo Santiago, Head of the Policy Advice and Implementation Division; and Miho Taguma, Ester Carvalhaes, José-Luis Alvarez‑Galván, Pierre Gouëdard and Rebecca Santos of the Directorate for Education and Skills, who provided in-depth feedback, advice and support at critical stages of the development of the report. Precious support was provided by Jacqueline Frazer, who prepared the report for publication and provided administrative support; by Rachel Linden, who organised the publication process; and by Catherine Bremer, Cassandra Davis, Claire Marguerettaz, Lawrence Pacewicz, and Mia Tuzovic, who provided additional counsel.