STURGEON FINALLY SAYS SORRY FOR EXAM SHAMBLES

U-turn at last – after a week defending policy that shattered dreams of thousands of pupils

NICOLA Sturgeon was forced into a grovelling apology to Scotland’s school pupils yesterday.

It came as she confirmed plans for an astonishing U-turn on the grades fiasco and finally caved in to pressure from pupils, parents, experts and opponents.

The First Minister agreed to resolve injustices faced by tens of thousands of youngsters who had their grades lowered because of the past performance of their school.

This was despite Miss Sturgeon spending a week defending the system used – and insisting that any unfairness would be dealt with via

the appeals system. But amid fears it would be unable to cope with the sheer volume – and claims from within her own party that the shambles would cost it votes – she finally agreed to act and admitted mistakes have been made.

Education Secretary John Swinney is expected to today confirm that teacher judgment alone will be used to grade all pupils who had their results lowered by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), without the need for an appeal.

It will mean more than 120,000 results will be increased.

But Miss Sturgeon defended him despite the latest in a long line of humiliating education U-turns.

She also said she does not attach any blame to her under-fire exams quango, saying responsibility lies with ministers.

She said ministers took decisions they felt were ‘right ones’ but admitted their approach had been to ‘think too much about the overall system and not enough about the individual pupil’.

She said: ‘And that has meant that too many students feel that they have lost out on grades they should have had – and also that has happened as a result, not of anything they’ve done, but because of a statistical model or an algorithm.

‘In addition, that burden has not fallen equally across our society. So, despite our best intentions, I do acknowledge we did not get this right and I’m sorry for that.’

She added: ‘This situation is not the fault of students and so it should not be on students to fix it. That is on us, and we will set out tomorrow exactly how we intend to do that.’

But she insisted that she ‘of course’ still has confidence in Mr Swinney, who is set to face a vote of no confidence at Holyrood later this week.

Scottish Tory education spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘It’s clear that after missing the boat on fixing the SQA issues months ago, now Nicola Sturgeon is missing the point on John Swinney as education secretary.

‘This isn’t about one issue. Mr Swinney’s report card is littered by F-grades every year and confidence in his ability to run our schools has evaporated.’

Teachers and schools had to issue grades to pupils based on a selection of course work and prelim exams because schools were closed due to coronavirus in March and the normal exam programme was not able to go ahead.

But the SQA then used a controversial system of ‘moderation’ which took into account the past exam performance of a pupil’s school and resulted in 124,564 pupils having their results downgraded.

Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: ‘Scottish Labour and other parties warned the First Minister and John Swinney about this for months and were ignored.

‘A belated and forced apology is not good enough. We need an immediate return to the grades recommended by teachers for those who saw their grades reduced. It’s time pupils and teachers got justice and Swinney got his jotters.’

Scottish Greens education spokesman Ross Greer said: ‘I’m pleased that the First Minister has now acknowledged that her government got this wrong and apologised. The working-class young people who were unfairly treated last week need an urgent solution to this unacceptable situation. Graham Grantand Comment – Page 16