Education secretary John Swinney will reassure teachers today that the individual results pupils achieve in new standardised national tests will not be published. Instead they will be known to teachers, helping confirm or refine   judgements about pupil progress, while the Scottish Government will instead collect data on national trends to inform policy.
The percentage of pupils reaching particular stagesin reading, writing and numeracy under the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) will continue to be collated on a national basis and published, but these are based on teacher judgements and not the test results alone.
It has taken a great deal of time and antagonism to get to this point. If what we have ended up with is a useful diagnostic tool for teachers, that is no bad thing.
But we have come a long way from what First Minister Nicola Sturgeon first apparently proposed. National tests were conceived as a solution to a lack of consistency in the way teachers were interpreting the levels pupils had reached under CfE and the fact that there was no wider publication of these figures. Standardised assessments were being used routinely across Scotland, but these were bought in and could not be compared across council boundaries.
As a result, ministers felt unable to tell how many pupils were making the expected progress under CfE amid concerns about possible falling standards.
There is a suggestion that by providing a consistent  national benchmark , the new Scottish National Standards Assessments (SNSA) will make it easier for teachers to be confident in the judgements they already make. Where progress is not being made fast enough by an individual, or where patterns suggest a whole subject or a class of pupils is struggling, the assessments can help teachers take effective action.
While it will continue to dismay those who object in principle to national testing, Mr Swinney’s announcement may satisfy the concerns of many teachers, though there is still the prospect of industrial action if councils do not address related concerns about the timing of the tests. Now we known individual pupil outcomes will not be published – which might have enabled the generation of school “league tables” –  this should bring an end to the main question at issue, that of data handling.
The most salutary aspect of the arrival of the SNSAs has been the political heat generated by the policy: An initial announcement lacking in detail upset many teachers and generated headlines. Opposition politicians stepped into a vacuum of the Scottish Government’s making, condemning or championing the outline proposals.  Ministers were too slow to clarify their intentions, while teachers feared tests would be used to judge them, thereby encouraging “teaching to the test”.
Now we have clarity, what schools need is a period of stability to judge whether the assessments are making a positive difference without the more negative consequences that many still fear.