PARENTS are likely to be at the heart of plans to introduce controversial new Scottish primary school tests.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is looking at setting up a group to help shape the new assessments which will include parents’ representatives and teaching unions.

The Scottish Government is also examining the introduction of brand new tests specifically designed to fit in with the country’s curriculum.

Currently, a majority of councils purchase tests from universities in England to assess how pupils are performing, but the assessments are expensive and are not designed for the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).

Ministers have been stung into action following findings earlier this year that showed falling standards of reading and writing despite curriculum reforms introduced by successive governments.

Ms Sturgeon will today outline her final Programme for Government before the Holyrood election in May next year. After MSPs return to parliament following their summer recess, she will set out a vision “for the coming decade”, officials said.

Last month, Ms Sturgeon paved the way for primary tests during a speech in Edinburgh, saying better and more reliable data was needed to assess performance in classrooms.

The First Minister said the creation of league tables, a prominent part of the education system south of the Border, was not the aim of the reforms, but accepted the creation of unofficial rankings would be a consequence of releasing information into the public domain.

However, teaching unions, parents and headteachers have already issued warnings over the potentially damaging impact testing can have on education if the results are misused.

The Scottish Parent Teacher Council said any move to introduce standardised classroom assessments would be unpopular, particularly if they led to more school league tables which unfairly compare schools with very different pupils.

And the Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland, which represents primary headteachers, said there would be a backlash against any system that created more bureaucracy.

Although testing is routine in primaries there is currently no standardised tests for Scotland. There are also no procedures for collecting the data at national level to compare the performance of councils or individual schools.

Parents are informed of how well their children are doing by reference to a number of different “levels” of achievement under CfE, which they are expected to achieve by P4 and P7.

The current levels are decided by teachers using their professional knowledge of pupils, backed up by a variety of classroom assessments.

However, under the system being considered by the government, a bespoke test would be created that would be seen as “proof” the pupil had achieved the level.

That would be seen by councils and the government as a more evidence-based approach to assessing the performance of pupils as well as providing national data.

However, critics argue the creation of a specific test undermines the professional judgement of teachers and leads to an agenda of target-setting by councils. They also claim it leads school staff to narrow their focus to get more pupils to pass the specific test, rather than concentrating on their overall education.

The debate around the reintroduction of national testing for primary pupils in Scotland dates back to the publication of a survey of literacy in April.

The biennial Scottish Survey of Literacy, introduced after the scrapping of national tests, found standards of reading and writing were falling despite the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence, which was expected to raise basic standards.

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdal said: “Children who started high school this week have spent every year of their time at school under an SNP Government. What have we seen for it? Almost half of the poorest kids leaving primary school are unable to write or count properly.”