Senior students in state schools the forgotten victims of coronavirus lockdown

Following your report on May 30 about some stages of schools re-opening in June, I would like to make a case for proper consideration to be given to the needs of senior students in Scottish state schools.

These are the students who are at a vital stage of their lives insofar as obtaining qualifications, preparing for transition to employment or further education, and being supported in social education as they develop skills needed in adulthood.

Their exam diet was immediately halted at lockdown and pupils were not encouraged to undertake work that could have been assessed to show how they had progressed in the last term of their course.

For several years the rigour of prelims has been neglected. Formerly they had to be assiduously set and marked in case their evidence was need for appeals. That has diminished, so the accuracy of this year’s awarding system will be cast in doubt.

From evidence of our local secondary school, teaching, assessment of assignments and feedback has been patchy, to say the least. In The Scotsman, Cameron Wyllie also attested to the great unevenness of pupils’ experience across Scotland. Moving suddenly from many years of teacher-led schooling to individual online learning would be bound to be challenging for teachers and students.

But our current S4 to S6 are being used as guinea pigs at an important time for them. Preparation for course choice, individual tutor contact and guidance have been absent.

Many schools will, of course, be excellent, but it would be quite feasible for schools in the last few weeks of June to organise personal or small group tutorials which would enable pupils to be given guidance about course choices, to meet next year’s teacher, to be given outlines of what the course and assessment would be and to take stock of next steps for these pupils. It would be much easier to do that with senior students than with nursery or P7 children.

I wonder what local authorities have been doing to support and monitor schools’ work for pupils from S4 to S6. What has the Government and Education Scotland been doing?

These students will lose many ceremonial highlights of their final years in school. It should not beyond the wit of our education leaders to demonstrate that they are taking action to support our soon-tobe citizens.

RUSSELL DICK The Paddock, Gullane