Education reform: evaluation strategy 2026 - 2034

2. Purpose

Scottish Government is publicly committed to the development of a coherent and robust approach to evaluation, including through inspection evidence, of the implementation of the updates to curriculum, qualifications and assessment across Scotland, and its impact on learner outcomes. An initial evaluability assessment has been produced by WPI economics and Scottish Government and partners, and this, alongside other evidence, has refined that work to align the evaluation more closely to the programme timeline, outputs and budget.

Policy evaluation is an essential requirement of the Scottish Government’s evaluation strategy, particularly where projects are high cost and impact. The evaluation will bring together evidence to support understanding of the curriculum, qualifications and assessment reform process and the impact of the reforms. Engagement with the evaluation supports an improvement culture where lessons are learned to aid improvement, and good practice is identified and shared more widely. Curriculum, qualifications and assessment reform is a constant iterative process and this evaluation will ensure that lessons learned are fed into both current and future iterations.

The Education Reform Programme has previously delivered structural reform to improve the ways our national bodies support schools and other education settings and to help improve the culture within the system. These include legislative and non-legislative changes to the national education body landscape. The evaluation will focus on evaluating how this revised structure delivers curriculum, qualifications and assessment reform across Scotland from 2026 to 2034, within the context of the reformed structure.