Local reaction to exams U-turn
HIGHLAND councillors in Caithness have welcomed the U-turn by Scotland's education secretary John Swinney over exam results, with one saying the Scottish Government had been wrong to apply a "one-size-fits-all" formula and another calling the matter an "embarrassing episode".
Mr Swinney this week issued an apology over the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) fiasco which had caused an outcry among parents and students in Caithness and across the country. It was announced that pupils whose exam results were downgraded are now to receive new grades based solely on teacher estimates.
Councillor Karl Rosie (Thurso and Northwest Caithness) said: “With all of the correspondence I received from young people on the topic of exam results, I was struck by how articulate and passionately the case was made for a reconsideration of the position reached by the SQA. Young people are the custodians of our future, and living in a country where their voices are heard and their government listens to them is vitally important."
The SNP councillor welcomed Mr Swinney’s apology and the announcement of an independent review of events by Professor Mark Priestley of Stirling University.
The lockdown saw all of Scotland's school exams cancelled for the first time, with the SQA drawing up a system to calculate results. This was to be based on teacher estimates based on their pupils' work over the year.
But these estimates were then fed through an SQA moderation system, which downgraded the marks handed out by teachers to bring them closer in line with previous years.
An SQA announcement said: "The Deputy First Minister announced that candidates who had SQA results downgraded from teacher estimates would now receive results in line with the original estimate.
"Replacement certificates will be issued in due course by SQA. Meanwhile, we will issue information about how this will affect individual candidates over the next few days, as soon as we have had time to process all of the information. Please bear with us while we go through that process.”
Councillor Matthew Reiss (Thurso and Northwest Caithness) said he hoped that the Scottish Government had "learnt an important lesson" over the matter.
The independent councillor said: "To be fair, they have reacted quickly, having recognised the serious problems they have created. This was classic centralisation – what they should have done is trusted our teachers and their professional judgement on how best to deal with the difficult challenge.
"Instead, a rather lazy 'one-size-fits-all' formula was applied by the Scottish Government with no or little understanding of how this would further increase students' anxiety. Furthermore, to judge pupils' abilities by relying on the overall performance of their individual schools was frankly rather heartless as well as unprofessional.
"This saga has damaged the reputation of Curriculum for Excellence and hopefully lessons have been learnt."
Councillor Struan Mackie (Thurso and Northwest Caithness), education spokesperson for the Highland Conservative group in the authority, said that he welcomed the Scottish Government’s U-turn.
"This puts to bed an utterly embarrassing episode for the Scottish Government which included a botched moderation process and insulting public statements from senior political figures that teachers had been too generous in providing estimated grades," he said.
"Our teachers and education support staff have performed valiantly through Covid-19 and have supported a generation of pupils who have undertaken a school year that has been full of uncertainty and disruption. The last thing they deserved was to have their professional judgment questioned from politicians and bureaucrats in Edinburgh.
"The moderation system deployed by the SQA was clearly unfair and questions must be raised at why it took the outcry of thousands of students, teachers and teaching unions to force an eleventh-hour U-turn by John Swinney.
"These concerns were known to both the education secretary and the SQA – based on the handling of the exam results alone, there can be no other option but for Mr Swinney to do the right thing and resign."
The chairman of Wick High School Parent Council, Professor Iain Baikie, said: “Wick High School pupils and parents will doubtless welcome the Scottish Government’s decision to reflect on a week of well-publicised concerns that subject teachers’ individual recommendations were not fully taken into account in the marking process.
"Some computer-generated results were completely unfair and produced a downwards bias that fatally undermined the assessment. This decision levels the playing field for pupils in schools that do not enjoy five years of high-level academic achievement. Many will feel this is a satisfactory outcome that will allow tens of thousands of pupils to continue with their chosen career paths."
