The V$DATABASE view has a column called CURRENT_SCN. The control file will be updated shortly after you query V$DATABASE. If you must see the SCN in the control file (not sure why this would be terribly important), you can dump the control file's contents. On my Web site I have a white paper titled "Dumping Oracle Blocks." Towards the end of that paper, I show how to dump the contents of the control file. This will show a number of SCNs for various operations logged in the control file.