Tories seek commitment to keep exams
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has come under fire at Holyrood after refusing to say if pupils will sit exams next year or if the Scottish Government had plans to scrap the traditional assessments.
Exams were cancelled this year and last due to the pandemic. Ms Sturgeon said ministers would be monitoring the situation with the virus over the summer before announcing in August if exams would take place in 2022.
She said experts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) would submit a report to ministers that same month, which would “help to inform” decisions on the future of exams.
At First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Ms Sturgeon said “there is a debate in Scotland right now about what the correct balance between traditional exams and continuous assessment is”.
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: “After being in government for 14 years, First Minister for seven, and having pledged education would be her number one priority, I think people across Scotland will expect the First Minister to be able to say if she is for or against exams.”
Ms Sturgeon stressed there was a need to “get all of this right” as she said ministers had to consider the place of “traditional exams” within the “future of qualifications”. She said: “No decisions have been taken around that.”
Mr Ross cited comments from education expert Professor Lindsay Paterson that it was “unlikely that a system that relied wholly on coursework would ever command public confidence” and urged the First Minister not to ditch traditional exams.
He said: “If the SNP remove the focus on fundamentals, if
they stop valuing core knowledge, if they ditch exams, isn’t her government abandoning the very things that made Scotland’s schools great?”
Ms Sturgeon said the “most important principle” is for the
country to “have a robust and respected system for awarding qualifications to young people”. Pupils across Scotland are preparing to find out what grades they have been awarded for qualifications based on
teacher assessments this year, although concerns have been raised about schools “moderating” the results to keep them in line with past grades.