Boundless opportunity

Moving to Scotland to lead new exams body Qualifications Scotland was a no-brainer for Nick Page. Having begun his career as a geography teacher, Page had significant classroom experience in English and Welsh schools before moving into local authority roles as both a director of children’s services and a council CEO. The chance to relocate north of the border to lead Qualifications Scotland, though, was an opportunity he says he simply could not pass up.

“The learning opportunity in Scotland is boundless,” he says. “We, as a nation, are big enough and small enough to have a genuinely world-class learning system. We’ve got all the components but like that Eric Morecambe quote about playing all the right notes in the wrong order, they need to be reordered. That’s the opportunity and what a privilege it is to be leading that.”

Having taken up the CEO role in July, Page began what he describes as his “orientation phase” in the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), the awarding body that was disbanded as part of far-reaching reforms begun by former education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville in 2021. Now that Qualifications Scotland has started work at the beginning of December – before becoming fully operational in early 2026 – Page says he is “very much in the discovery and understanding phase”, which will run over the next couple of months before changes to the system begin to be made. With the 2026 exam season fast approaching, he expects it to be an ongoing and evolving process.

“You need to understand the wiring to change the wiring, but we can’t take this ship into dry dock and stop to fundamentally rebuild it,” he says. “We have to deliver successful examinations in 2026; to change and improve as an organisation is a 3D chess game. There are learners who are relying on me to help them do the very best they can in their exams next year. It’s really important that Qualifications Scotland is stable while it’s changing.”

Qualifications Scotland was created with the specific aim of overhauling the exams system. Reform of the sector was deemed essential after a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found a “misalignment” between the aims of the Scottish curriculum and the focus on exams in the later years of school. In the wake of the report it was decided by government that the SQA as well as quality, improvement and inspections agency Education Scotland would be replaced.

Far from being a rebranded SQA, Qualifications Scotland is an entirely new body that is being designed from the off to engage with learners and educators so their voices are at the heart of everything it does. As Page says, the aim is not just to be a new organisation but to “fundamentally shift the foundations of the education system”.

“A lot of that is pretty obvious,” he says. “In my experience of leading big change and improvement projects, if you make it complicated and complex you might just take a few people on that journey with you. This is about spending time with learners, teachers, lecturers and providers, and listening and hearing. We’re forming hypotheses and forming ideas and, fundamentally for Qualifications Scotland, we’re taking those ideas back to our professionals and back to our learners and testing them. That’s the ground shift that we’re leading here.”

A key area of focus for Qualifications Scotland is to identify areas of the qualifications system that are not working as efficiently as they should be and, if necessary, to replace them. The SQA dabbled in that kind of change at the beginning of this year when it moved away from formal exams for National 5s in practical cake craft, practical metalworking and practical woodworking. It is unlikely that approach will be rolled out across the board, but Page says the aim is to be as radical as possible and “a bit of a disruptor”.

“Since taking on this job I’ve stood in front of hundreds of head teachers, local authority people and groups of principals, and the first thing I’ve said to them is that nothing is off the table,” he says. “We need to be quite radical. We’ve done some amazing things in the past, for example around assessment for practical courses, but we’ve also made mistakes or we haven’t communicated why we’re doing things well enough.

“To change an assessment system and do it properly will take three to four years. You have to make sure that what you bring in has parity with what was there before – a new award has to have the same value as an award from three or four years before. You have to make sure the guardrails are there. We need to enable our learners to experience a range of opportunities on their learning journey. And we have to take the entire nation with us.”

Although it’s still early days for Page’s assessment and discovery phase, he says the early indications are that those working in and using Scotland’s education system are as open to change as he is. He was cheered to hear one teacher describe the project as a “resetting of the currency” while he notes that learners have expressed a desire to see a range of different assessment types introduced into the mix. Though he stresses that the full systemic transformation will unfold gradually, Page says the first round of changes will start to be felt in the current academic year.

There are learners who are relying on me to help them do the very best they can in their exams next year

“This year it’s really important that Qualifications Scotland builds a quietly competent exam season,” he says. “That doesn’t seem very ambitious but, as a new leader in Scotland, when I look at the current system that idea itself is a challenge. I worry whether the way we currently assess learning is providing the right scaffolding for learners to progress in their lives. Is it relevant enough? Employers tell me that, even if they hire top graduates, it takes three years to get them to the point where they are adding value. That’s what worries me – are we relevant to the social and economic growth of Scotland?”

The start of Qualifications Scotland has come as the Scottish Government grapples with how to close the many skills gaps that have grown over the past few decades. The aim, Page stresses, is to see education providers work hand-in-hand with employers to ensure learners are being equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to close those gaps.

“We need to attract global business into our nation to provide world-class jobs and the economic growth that comes from that,” he says. “We’re part of that ambition, and we need to be a credible part. When we talk about qualifications reform we can design all kinds of things for five years’ time, but it will have no value unless we’re doing it with our colleges and universities. We’ve been episodic in the past, but this is our opportunity to be consistent changers and improvers. We need to adapt and be agile. Children in school now are being educated for jobs we don’t even know exist yet. We’ve got to be learning and relearning all the time.”

As he looks ahead to the coming year, Page says it’s vital that all parts of Scotland’s education system are bold enough to embrace the change that’s needed. Learners just get one chance to go through the country’s schools, he says, which is why “we’ve got to make sure that that one chance is the best chance”.

“Let’s change and improve and be transformative,” he says. “We have the ability in our teachers, lecturers, training providers and civil servants to do that. I’ve never met as much ability – let’s galvanise around this once in a generation opportunity.”

This article is sponsored by Qualifications Scotland.

www.sqa.org.uk