Under this policy, I would not have been able to go on to university... or go on to teach at university
Education should be an engine of social mobility. Closing the attainment gap is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s education policy, and the First Minister has staked her reputation on her record on education.
The philosophy behind the government’s “Getting it Right for Every Child” approach to education is to put the individual child at the centre of education policy. And yet the SQA and the Scottish Government have made a conscious choice to adopt a policy which appears to privilege the integrity of statistics over the exam results of individual pupils.
Even worse, whether intended or not, by adjusting individual grades to better fit historic performance in exams in certain areas, this policy entrenches existing inequalities in our society.
Some may point out that grades have increased across the board this year, in affluent and deprived areas alike. But how can we explain this to the pupil who has worked hard and performed well in their coursework, only to find their grade adjusted downward because of where they live, or how their predecessors in that school have performed in exams?
This policy sends a message to pupils in the most deprived local authorities that they cannot aspire to do better than their peers in previous years. If this policy had been in place when I was sitting my Highers, I would almost certainly have had my grades adjusted downwards, which would have meant that I would not have gone on to study law at university, and would not be teaching law at the University of Glasgow today.
How many will miss out on the social mobility I enjoyed, and are instead going to be left behind due to a policy which adjusts grades on the basis of socioeconomic status rather than merit?
Some will ask what the SQA could have done differently. There is an answer to that question, too. At the University of Glasgow, where I am assessment officer for the LLM in the School of Law, we, like many other universities across the UK, operated a “No Detriment” policy. Essentially, this meant trying to ensure a student’s final grade was not out of line with the work they had submitted before the pandemic. This was not easy to implement, but the goal was to use an individual student’s past performance to calculate their final grade.
Why the SQA and the Scottish Government decided not to do similarly, relying on pupils’ coursework, and the estimations of the teachers who know them best, is unclear.
Perhaps it was simply a desire to avoid more pupils receiving higher grades this year than would otherwise be expected. But would this really have been so bad?
What is clear is that the alternative, the policy that has been adopted, is far worse as it is fundamentally unfair to pupils and also reinforces inequality in our society. It must be revisited, and fast, in order to avoid causing lasting damage to the lives of young people who need our support the most.