I spent almost the whole of my working life in education.

My sympathies lie with the hard working teachers and support staff who make such great efforts on behalf of their students. I certainly back ideas to reduce workloads and cut bureaucracy. Proposals to reduce some of the assessment in the new Curriculum for Excellence, for example, sound well-founded to me.

However, I don't agree with those, notably the teaching unions, who oppose national testing. I may sound contradictory. Reduce assessment in one area, introduce it in another. But national tests can play a valuable role in our schools.

Those opposed to national testing often cite the case of Finland's schools, near the top in all international league tables yet exam-free apart from the set taken by students at the end of their secondary careers. But the star performer in European education in recent years has been Poland. Its recently reformed curriculum includes national testing at the end of the primary stage and early in the secondary stage.

Poland has leapt above the UK in the performance tables for reading, maths and science. The UK's showing generally is pretty mediocre but Scotland's performance is even worse than England's.

National tests - say, at the end of primary and the start of secondary - aren't by themselves going to change this. But they can help in a number of ways.

They provide feedback on how the education system as a whole is doing. They help identify struggling schools needing extra support - as well as outstanding performers whose good practice might be disseminated. Last, but not least, they provide baseline data for added value measures.

Testing goes on all the time in schools. It's how teachers monitor the progress of their students. But it would be a disempowered and ineffective school leadership team which did not have access to the results of this testing. How else to ensure that Geography students in Mr A's group are getting as good a deal as those in Mrs B's group? How else to monitor progress? Waiting until exam results at sixteen is far too late.

A good school is always doing other kinds of 'testing' too; that is, continually seeking feedback on its performance. Much of this is data. All senior staff worth their socks will be monitoring, on a weekly basis, attendance and, for provision beyond the leaving age, retention. Student feedback will be welcome, some of it in the form of surveys.

Lesson observation by appropriately trained senior staff is another invaluable activity to eliminate poor practice and share the good. Many schools make highly effective - in some cases, inspirational - use of target-setting for individual students.

The best schools closely monitor what the available data is telling them. The starting point for the highly successful London Schools Challenge strategy, which massively improved attainment in the UK capital, was data and facing up to the, sometimes very uncomfortable, messages it presented.

In short, every good school has effective systems for recording assessment and monitoring progress. So why not do the same nationally?

Well, say the opponents of national tests, it would result in 'crude' and 'distorting' league tables. Yet we already have such national league tables - of the most dreadfully crude and distorting sort.

These are the tables which the media put together from the examination results taken by students between the ages of 16 and 18. Surprise, surprise, these show that the best performing schools are in the more affluent areas.

Value added performance tables might show a different picture. These would, however, require national testing to establish performance at an earlier age. This baseline data would enable progress at the age of 16 or 18 to be measured - the outcomes moderated or 'contextualised' by available socio-economic indicators such as the numbers of pupils receiving school meals.

I suspect the results would show that some of the 'top performing' schools in more affluent areas are actually coasting - adding little or no value. That is, students are doing less well than they should be. I suspect too that some of the 'struggling' secondaries at the bottom of the current unofficial tables would be shown to be achieving heroic added value for their students.

Another argument against national testing is that teachers 'will teach to the test'. However, cramming never succeeds. In the schools with the best attainment, teaching is engaging and motivating, the needs of individual students are met, enrichment activities are plentiful and the general atmosphere is happy and purposeful. Attempts to operate as an 'exam factory' just don't work.

Introducing national tests might be less of a departure than is made out. More than three-quarters of Scottish councils currently purchase standardised tests from England to identify how well primary pupils are progressing because similar resources are not available north of the Border. There's an evident need to introduce a national system here.

I'm sure it would add great value to Scotland's education - in more ways than one.