Sturgeon promises full appeals as exam grades drop in poor areas

This year’s exams appeals process will be “more important” than ever, Nicola Sturgeon has said, after a controversial system resulted in thousands of young people having their grades lowered.

The Scottish Government has come under fire from pupils, teachers, education experts and opposition parties after a quarter of results were lowered by SQA moderators and some pupils were marked down based on past performance of their schools.

Children from poorer backgrounds appeared to be the worst affected, with figures showing a 15% gap between the actual and estimated pass rate for children in the most deprived areas, compared to 7% for those in the least deprived areas.

Concerns have also been raised about teachers being “overwhelmed” with appeal requests when children return to classes next week because the methodology for assessment was only released on the day results were received.

Ms Sturgeon rejected criticism from Professor Lindsay Paterson, one of

Scotland’s leading experts on education, that the basis for reducing grades had been “arbitrary”.

The first minister said she understood the initial moderation may leave individual pupils feeling hard done by, but the appeals process would this week’s results the end of the process.

She said: “What I would say to young people who are disappointed in the results they got is I understand that and I am really sorry that we had a situation this year where we had to put in place something different because of the pandemic.

“We are trying to get it right, not just on a headline statistical level – that’s not unimportant because we want employers to look in future years at the 2020 results and not think that they are not valid, so we want there to be a credibility about them, with those who did well included in that – but also to make sure that young people who feel they have not had fair results get the chance to have their own individual circumstances looked at.”

School exams in Scotland were cancelled for the first time in modern history this year, with the grades of pupils estimated by teachers.