A pupil’s view on this year’s exam results
Lochgilphead High School’s Eilidh Graham discusses how this year’s abnormal results day impacted students across the country.
Normally, you would think, the majority of students would be wishing for some unforeseen circumstances to lead to exams being cancelled.
This year, that was the reality for students all across Scotland.
In the middle of March, when pupils were finalising and submitting portfolios and assignments, it was announced by the Scottish Government's Cabinet Secretary for Education John Swinney that the 2020 exams would not go ahead and school closures would be inevitable as a result of the coronavius pandemic.
At the time, watching the start of his spiel in class and frantically trying to complete my history assignment, the general feeling amongst the class was the exams were still going ahead. This assumption grew after hearing Mr Swinney explain the exams had been held without fail since 1888 and that ‘in the midst of two world wars, the exams went ahead’. But no, they were cancelled.
Initially, plenty people were happy with the outcome. There were those who were never fussed about exams in the first place and those who had already exceeded expectations in the January prelims.
With results day this week, a common feeling amongst pupils, myself included, was they would have received better results if they had actually sat the exams. But maybe this was us getting our excuses in early.
Moving from fifth to sixth year, I feel I could be a lot worse off considering how the pandemic could have affected education. Fourth years moving into fifth year will have missed out on National 4 and National 5 exams and as these are generally the first exams you will sit, they seem to be a much bigger deal than they are.
Content
Last year I found myself more worried about the fact I was sitting actual exams, rather than the content of them.
However, for this year's prelims, I only had to worry about what I knew – or didn’t know – having had the experience of sitting in the exam hall.
In that respect I sympathise with the year below as they’ve missed out on that and now the first exams they sit will be in S5 and are possibly the most crucial ones if they are looking to go onto university or college.
I think the year that was hardest hit was sixth year as they had no chance to improve prelim grades they might need for conditional university/ college places.
Normally in the lead up to results day, you would have a fair idea of what your results will turn out to be, whether you share that or not is another story.
Having little idea about what our grades will be based on, it was hard to know what to expect as the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) hadn’t given much of a clue on their method for awarding grades.
The SQA has said it is awaiting an unprecedented amount of appeals this year – but that should be expected after it waived the fee for appealing which can be up to £40 – and it has said many of their examiners have overruled grades suggested by teachers and grades may be reduced on the basis of the school's previous performance.
A good few pupils have admitted any exam was ‘pretty hard but hopefully they did enough’ when asked how they got on, whether they were fairly confident they'd be well over the 70 per cent mark for an A grade or they knew they would be in next year for a resit.
Again, a different story for this year as opening the much-anticipated, and often dreaded letter – or nowadays text – was a complete surprise, having nothing apart from prelim grades and teachers subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – comments to go on.