Cancelling these gold standard exams has failed Scottish children

In a scathing critique, this retired principal says John Swinney has made a terrible error of judgment

THERE can be no doubt about it: the Scottish Government has failed its exams – and our young people. This Covid year has moved glacially, and it seems remarkable that it was only in March that John Swinney created a great stooshie by cancelling the 2020 exam diet – for the first time ever since the exams began in 1888.

I think that was a mistake, but it was an honourable decision made in extraordinary circumstances – ‘ unprecedented’ has now become a cliché, but it’s true.

What followed was a terrible mess: The candidates were given estimates by their schools and these were subjected to an algorithm which decimated the results of bright children in less wellperforming schools, pushing the attainment gap to cavernous levels and leaving thousands of young people bereft.

So the Government changed its mind, the kids got their teacher estimates, and we moved on. Now Mr Swinney, encouraged by the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), has, on this, the darkest day of the year, decided to cancel t he Highers and Advanced Highers again.

He decided to cancel the National 5 exams some weeks ago. That made at least a modicum of sense because, let’s be honest, for the vast majority of young people they are a practice for the following year – in fact, I wonder if we’ll ever see National 5s again.

But to cancel Highers and Advanced Highers for a second year is a terrible error of judgment – and nothing Mr S win neyh as said truly explains it. He has caved in to the teachers’ union, and neglected his duty to the parents and pupils of Scotland.

There really can be no safety issue – so let’s dispense with that first. Children and their teachers are in schools now, taking appropriate safety measures to minimise the risk to their health and the much greater risk of passing the virus on to more vulnerable parents and grandparents.

Schools and education authorities would have had months to ensure the safest possible dynamics for the exam diet. Exams are obviously fairly socially distanced anyway, plus there is the possible use of other buildings – say church halls, say theatres, say conference centres – to expand the space available.

There would have been time to train and, if necessary, equip invigilators.

Of course, there is also the tiny matter of the vaccine, rolled out to its first beneficiaries on the same day this announcement was made.

Disruption

Many of us interested in Scottish education saw the arrival of the vaccine as the final evidence that the exams could go ahead.

Alas, even if by the spring we are all vaccinated, our young people will not be doing their national exams.

However, to be fair to Mr Swinney, he says that the decision was based on the disruption that Covid has caused to the education system rather than safety concerns.

Now, it would be churlish to spend too much time pointing out why there was so much disruption – extended school closures; failure to quality control the online offer; failure to ensure the most deprived young people got the necessary teaching. However, I cannot see that cancelling the exams does anything more than invalidate the good work done in many schools and very likely ensure that the poverty-related attainment gap continues to widen.

Surely the way forward – and they had six months to do it – was to consider adjusting marks for actual exam performances to take account of teacher estimates and relative deprivation, r ather t han throwing all our babies out with the bathwater.

That might have been a reasonable way to re-level the playing field of the Highers, the historic ‘gold standard’ of Scottish education over many, many decades, in t hese extraordinary times.

The effect of yesterday’s announcement is that fifth and sixth year cohorts face their second year without actual examinations. Once again, their marks will be based on teacher estimates, placing a tremendous professional and emotional strain on their teachers – remember, teachers know their students inside out, and are willing them to succeed, often going well beyond what their pay and long hours call for.

They should not have the final say-so.

Meanwhile, young people themselves face a terrible Christmas holiday preparing for ‘prelims’ which won’t be prelims at all. The results will surely figure large in any final objective teacher estimates.

Then the grades issued in the summer of 2021 will be subjected to the scrutiny of employers, colleges and universities. I mean, will people really think that teacher estimates are the same thing as results from students in year groups above, and ( l et’s hope) below, who have sat ‘proper’ exams?

I heard about these developments yesterday, and then spent an hour with a good student from up the road whom I’m tutoring for Higher English as a favour for his mum.

Uncertainty

He says he is ‘really annoyed’ about the announcement and it’s clear that the social media wires that string teenagers together are already buzzing with frustration and worry.

He is already thinking back to tests earlier in the term, in which he’s not done particularly well, and wondering if they are now going to count towards his final grade.

Now you could argue, of course, that a bit more continuous assessment might be fairer, but not so if you spring it on young people with half the real academic year gone.

Mr Swinney originally said that no decision would be made before February.

What caused him to change his mind? Solidarity with Wales? Interestingly, the EIS has welcomed his decision, but cautioned that the additional teacher workload must be ‘properly managed’ – in other words they recognise that this means a great deal more work for their members.

However, they welcome the end of the uncertainty surrounding this issue.

There was, of course, another way of ending that uncertainty – it would have been the brave decision to assure our young people that Scotland was, in this area at least, returning to normal service. And to promi se them that their exam results, come the summer’s day when that vital text message at last arrives, would stand alongside the results of their brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents.