FM defends SQA over moderation

Nicola Sturgeon has defended the Scottish Qualifications Authority’s (SQA) over a moderation process that reduced the pass rate of the poorest Higher pupils by more than twice that of the richest.

She argued the system helped to maintain the “credibility” of results.

The pass rate of pupils in the most deprived data zones was reduced by 15.2% from teacher estimates after the exam board’s moderation.

In contrast, the pass rate for pupils from the most affluent backgrounds dropped by 6.9%.

The first minister said without the moderation, a 19.8% increase of the pass rate among the poorest fifth of pupils would have been “unprecedented and therefore not credible”.

At national five level, the pass rate for the poorest pupils was 74% when teachers’ estimates would have led to an 84.5% pass rate without moderation.

For the least deprived, the 92.3% estimated pass rate fell to 87.1% after the SQA’s moderation.

In Scotland’s first school year without exams, due to coronavirus, more than a quarter (26.2%) of grades were changed during moderation by the SQA – a total of 133,762 – while 377,308 entries were accepted unchanged.

The moderation criteria included the performance of schools and grades were adjusted “where a centre’s estimates were outside the constraint range for that course”, according to the SQA chief examining officer Fiona Robertson.

New schools without previous exam results were unchanged.

Despite the downgrading of 124,564 pupils’ results – 93.1% of all the moderated grades – exam pass rates rose at every level and would have been the highest on record without the SQA downgrading some results, said Education Secretary John Swinney.

Mr Swinney stressed that approximately 90% of moderation “involved a change of just one grade”.

Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said the first minister “effectively said the moderation system should maintain the shameful attainment gap that already exists”.

Oluwatofunmi Adenuga is celebrating her grades