Seldom have I felt such crushing disillusionment with the terrible realisation that old prejudices are as strong as ever..
Dream big, young Scots. You are the children of a forward-looking nation which has shaken off old prejudices that kept the plebs in their place.
You live in a country led by a working-class woman who has put education at the very centre of government policy because she knows she used her own to drive her ambition, to power innate ability.
She grew up with the injustice of the Thatcher years. She would be the “righter” of those wrongs.
So, look to Nicola Sturgeon to see where hard work and achievement can lead when given the chance to flourish. Be inspired.
But wait a minute...you kids from schools in less attractive postcodes... you smarty-pants from areas of multiple deprivation...news just in from the Scottish Government:
Get back in your box and stop being so uppity. In short: Know your station. What other conclusion than this can we draw from the scandal of the “moderation” of this year’s exam results?
Seldom have I felt such crushing disappointment.
At the heart of the system, old prejudices are as strong as ever – rich kids achieve; poorer kids don’t.
We can now see why the SQA was so secretive about its methodology for generating grades, keeping it under wraps until results day.
Like an under-performing student afraid to hand in his shoddy essay, they threw it on the desk and ran for the door.
Kids saw their long-prepared-for exams cancelled by the coronavirus crisis. Upheaval enough, we could argue. Oh no, let’s chuck in some more anguish.
Some 124,564 pupils were given exam results lower than those predicted by teachers. The SQA “downgraded” their awards based largely on the historic performance of the school they attend.
Even in this surreal year, it is mind-bendingly mad. In Sturgeon’s “egalitarian” Scotland, it is painful exposure of deepset discrimination.
And it feels like a state-sponsored selection process.
The Scottish Tories’ education spokesman Jamie Greene commented: “It’s fundamentally unfair to make assumptions about a pupil based on where they live.”
When the Tories are lecturing on class prejudice, you know you’re in serious trouble.
On the basis of robust evidence, and personal knowledge of each student, Scottish teachers in the most deprived areas predicted a pass rate of 85.1 per cent for their Higher candidates.
This was lowered by 15.2 per cent by the SQA so o the pass rate was just 69.9 per cent.
In the most well-off areas, as, teacher estimates predicted ed a pass rate of 91.5 per cent. This was downgraded by the he
SQA by only 6.9 per cent. This, we are told, is so the system remains “credible” and retains its “integrity”. We can’t be seen to have too many passes.
So, we’ll just take some away from the kids in the poorer schools because they were never going to do THAT well, right?
The SQA model “upgraded” the results of 6.9 per cent of those entries which were “adjusted”, giving higher grades than those which had been estimated.
It will be interesting to see where those “upgrades” occurred.
There are tales aplenty of pupils from posher schools which have found their results were better than expected. One boy I know – from a well-known private school – bagged six As and a B in his National 5s even though he failed most of his prelims and scraped passes in the rest.
Kids like him already look forward to great privileges in life. Doors will automatically open for them, even before anyone looks at their exam results.
What is clear is that bright pupils from schools with previously poor attainment records have been marked down by a statistical model that was stacked against them. Their futures are hobbled by a brutal hammer of the past. In the interests of full disclosure, my son is one of them. In Higher chemistry, his grade went from an estimate of an A to the awarding of a B.
Every single one of his school friends experienced the same.
Some
96.1 per cent of adjusted results were moved just one grade. For some, that took them from a pass to a fail. Some might say, “What’s the big deal?”
His results are good enough for university but not for the medical course he dreams of, where five As are required at the first sitting. He has four. That one grade change made such a big difference.
Of course, we will challenge this through the free-for-this-year SQA appeal process but the psychological damage has been done, the message delivered – know your station.
Is my son meant to think himself lucky? After all, he attends a state school which ranks in the bottom third in a league table of Higher results.
But I’ve never put any stock by league tables. Everyone knows they give an unfair reflection of schools, skewed by the catchment areas they serve.
Everyone knows that individual pupils within those schools can still excel. Nurtured and encouraged, they can still go on to achieve wonderful results.
Not just wonderful “for them”.
Not just wonderful “for their school”. Wonderful by any official standard.
Everyone knows all of that except, it seems, the SQA, whose model embeds those league tables, painting out individual performances with broad, judgmental brush strokes.
Let’s keep this in perspective. Of the many, many awful effects of the life-and-death crisis that is Covid-19, this is by no means the worst.
But that doesn’t mean we shrug our shoulders and accept. It is an injustice. And we were meant to have left injustice behind.
SNP MP Mhairi Black has called for a Government investigation. Academics and experts are piling on the pressure.
Statistics professor Guy Nason, of Imperial College London, concluded a damning assessment by saying: “The problem at the heart of the statistical standardisation is that it can be simultaneously unfair to individuals but also maintain the integrity of the system.
“However, if system integrity damages the life chances of individuals, then it is not much of a system.”
Surely a trained solicitor such as Sturgeon, who left Greenwood Academy in north Ayrshire to study law at Glasgow University, will not tolerate such an affront to fair play?
Surely she will not preside over the denial of life chances to kids who have tried so hard to close the attainment gap?
Surely she won’t be the
First Minister who encouraged young Scots to dream big – but not too big?