THE annual cost of delivering controversial new standardised tests to Scottish pupils will be £2.4 million, new figures show.
An official tender document from the Scottish Government has estimated the value of the contract for the first five years of its duration as £12m, including VAT.
The figure is considerably more than the amount local authorities currently pay to administer standardised tests purchased from universities in England.
Earlier this year, Cosla, the umbrella body for councils, said investment made by local authorities into existing standardised tests was around £1m annually.
However, the Scottish Government has previously promised to meet the costs in full.
The current debate around the reintroduction of national testing for primary pupils in Scotland dates back to the publication of a survey of literacy in April this year.
The biennial Scottish Survey of Literacy - ironically introduced after the scrapping of national tests - found standards of reading and writing were falling despite the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), which was expected to raise basic standards.
The Scottish Government believes there is insufficient data on pupil performance in primary schools to establish which schools are performing well and which should be doing better.
As a result First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said all schools would be expected to introduce national standardised tests to assess pupils at a number of key stages in primary school as well as the third year of secondary.
In January, ministers said they had decided not to publish data from the new assessments after significant opposition from teaching unions who argued the information would be used to compile "damaging" league tables comparing schools serving pupils from very different socio-economic backgrounds.
Instead, the Scottish Government will publish the attainment levels pupils have reached in literacy and numeracy under existing CfE benchmarks, which are based on the professional judgement of teachers, backed up by evidence from the new tests.
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