Exam results ‘easy shorthand’ for judging schools’ reputations

School performance cannot be judged through exam results alone, it has been claimed.

Angus Council’s head of schools and learning, Dr Pauline Stephen, also said exam results “should not be life-defining” and that judging schools or councils on results “can be meaningless” due to other qualifications pupils can obtain.

She now wants people to stop using words like “academic path” or “vocational learning” to describe the pathways learners can take.

Dr Stephen said: “Exam results are important.

“They are the keys with which young people leave the required education period of their life to open the doors to their future adult life.

“However they are not and should not be life-defining.

“For every story of a self-made millionaire who left school with no exams, there is one about a ‘straight A’ student who had difficulties coping with the expectations of independent life.”

Dr Stephen said the difficulty for local authorities come “results time” is that the data there and then relates to qualifications aligned to the SQA.

She said: “This means in August we will have the data for a young person’s achievement of, for example their three Highers in S5, but we don’t yet have the data for all other learning accredited via the SCQF.

“We won’t have the final update on that until February of the following year.

“As the qualification offering becomes more diverse, evaluating a local authority’s or a school’s performance on August data alone can become meaningless.”

She said there are expectations put on councils at results time to state how well their young people have achieved.

Dr Stephen described it as “easy shorthand for enhancing or destroying reputations as ‘good schools/local authorities’ or not”.

She said: “The #nowrongpath initiative has been around for a few years now.

“It aims to support an increased awareness that there are many routes out of school.”