Transparency is key in exam results fiasco
Dear Editor I was interested in your report that more than half of SQA candidates at St Modan’s High School had their Higher results downgraded from their teachers’ estimates.
In the 1970s, I was head of the mathematics department at St Modan’s and a marker for the SQA’S predecessor body, the Scottish Certificate of Education Examination Board. My commitment to the school over many years may also be judged by the fact that all five of my children were educated at St Modan’s.
When I taught at St Modan’s, the school produced an annual report giving, for each subject, the number of pupils presented at Higher grade together with the number of passes. More recently, when I asked, as an interested parent , for such statistics, the then headteacher adamantly refused and I had to make a formal request through Freedom of Information legislation. I was eventually given most of the statistics I requested but the whole process was very time consuming.
From the data provided, it seemed to me that, in certain subjects, the school was under-performing and evidence from other sources confirmed my suspicions. For example, SQA statistics enable the annual publication of league tables giving, for each school, the percentage of pupils who gain five or more Highers.
It would, of course ,be unfair to compare a school with a high proportion of deprived pupils to a school with a more prosperous intake. To allow for this, the league tables now produce for each school a virtual comparator, which is a sample with similar characteristics to the actual school cohort, taking into account factors such as levels of deprivation.
In recent years, St Modan’s has performed below its virtual comparator and this may partly explain why so many candidates were initially down-graded this year, bearing in mind that the SQA’S methodology took into account each school’s track record on pass rates.
This year the Cabinet Secretary for Education belatedly but correctly agreed to upgrade all results which had initially been down-graded by the SQA and let’s hope that lessons have been learned. In future, the SQA must be much more transparent but schools must also have a higher degree of transparency so that parents and young people can make more informed choices about their education.
The school that I had the privilege of teaching in half a century ago was in some respects more transparent than in recent years. I trust that the new leadership at St Modan’s will aim higher.
Dennis Canavan Bannockburn