Would you rather have a study guide with “hints and tips” - or know what is, or indeed is not, going to be assessed in a forthcoming exam?
Knowing the topics that have made the cut in the exam paper seems, on the face of it, a far better deal. And that’s the conclusion that many teachers seemed to come to this week when reacting to the Scottish government announcement, such as the concern about levels of pupil and teacher absence due to Covid-19, that the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) will be moving to “Scenario 2” and providing revision support for pupils.
Essentially, this support will take three forms: more information about what’s going to be in the exam (or not in the exam), revision guides, and, in a limited number of cases, study notes that can be taken into the exam.
Among teachers, though, there is a lack of confidence that the study guides produced by the SQA will provide any more insight than they can already give their students, with one teacher commenting, “I’d love to know what they will do that I’m not already doing, or might do myself, to support my students in my classes at my school”.
A social subjects teacher flagged up that students of Advanced Higher history and Advanced Higher maths had already received notice of “content that will not be assessed” - this was part of the package of modifications to courses that was put in place at the start of the school year.
However, under the new plans, Advanced Higher maths candidates are now going to be getting “advanced notice of further content that will not be assessed”, while the Advanced Higher history pupils will be getting a study guide.
“Where is the equity here?” the teacher asked.
For its part, the SQA says support varies because the way different courses are examined varies, and this further package of support will also take into account any modifications made at the start of the year.
But equity and fairness are not the only concerns - teachers also question the timing. The SQA has published an overview of the kind of support that will be made available for each qualification with an exam, but it says more detail will not become available until the week beginning 7 March. Teachers, though, are worried about wasting time teaching content over the next month that is then removed.
The answer from the SQA is that: 1) the exam papers haven’t been finalised so they can’t say definitively yet what is, and isn’t, going to feature; and 2) they want to “avoid the narrowing of learning and teaching, which would negatively impact learners’ breadth of course knowledge and understanding”.
On the face of it, this seems a reasonable position - do we really want students progressing on to more advanced school qualifications, or indeed college and university, with big gaps in their knowledge?
But when everything hinges on the exam - which is more true this year than ever given essays and projects were often the first elements of courses to go, to ease workload - we shouldn’t be surprised that teachers and pupils have an unrelenting focus on them.
It is the system that is the problem, not the people who are trying to make it work.
Parallels can be drawn between the approach taken to the qualifications this year and another story that gained traction this week, about the bottom being chopped off classroom doors to improve ventilation.
In a letter to the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee detailing how the government had decided last month it was an extra £5 million that was needed to finally solve the problem of poor classroom ventilation, education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said £300,000 was available to “undercut” doors “to increase airflow” (as well as £1.6 million for air filtration units; £2.4 million for extractor fan units; and a further £0.7 million for contingency costs).
The story attracted huge amounts of attention and then went on to feature in First Minister’s Questions yesterday because it encapsulated people’s frustration: human beings are very good at coming up with solutions to difficult problems but when it comes to some of the key issues facing schools - like safety and making sure pupils get the chance to demonstrate what they know and can do - the solution has been to tinker around the edges.
Small changes - be it to courses or classrooms - have been drip fed into schools when the clamour from teachers or politicians or unions or parents becomes too loud to ignore.
Now, thanks to this endless tweaking, it feels impossible to determine if Scottish classrooms are finally going to be well ventilated and safe when this latest pot of cash is spent. Similarly - after all the changes to exams and courses - it feels impossible to glean how equal or fair the arrangements now are.
If a less scattergun approach had been taken, perhaps some long-term good could have come out of the crisis - like an end to stuffy classrooms or better assessment arrangements for students.
But increasingly it seems that at the end of all of this - after all the stress, pressure, worry and the huge expense the pandemic has led to - there are no clear silver linings emerging, just a hodgepodge of quick and not particularly well thought out fixes.
Ill-fitting classroom doors may well come to be remembered as a fitting symbol for all the myriad shortcomings of these past two years.
Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith
