Why can’t we bring back Standard Grade and let all pupils have equality of opportunity? Standard Grades may have been replaced by Nationals a decade ago, but a decade of hindsight has clearly shown the benefits that they offered.
I write this after the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) last week announced the updated arrangements for session 2023-24 - and shortly before the Hayward consultation on qualfications and assessmwent ends this Friday - and I was not surprised by the lack of foresight or imagination on display.
For my subject, English, they have brought back almost all that they removed during the Covid pandemic. What they are keeping is the one folio piece rather than reverting back to two, but I don’t know anyone jumping for joy about that.
The reintroduction of talk seems fine on the surface but it is a tick-box exercise: teachers will race to get it done so they can concentrate the little time they do have on things that actually will be assessed at the end of the course. And the AVU (added-value unit) back for National 4? I know it’s meant to be equivalent to an exam, but lots of schools try to get it out of the way at the end of S3 so they have time to get often very vulnerable pupils through other N4 units.
Many schools start pupils off at National 5 and fall back to N4 in January or February of the exam year, then it’s more acrobatics trying to get the ones who drop down through the required assessments. Now, we get to keep one folio piece, rather than go back to two - but many teachers agree that it puts a lot of pressure on pupils to place all their hopes on one piece.
Lots of schools are trying hard not to devalue writing in this way and so are making pupils do both creative and discursive pieces before choosing the best one. Putting writing through a sausage factory like this will just hasten the demise of writing skills and line the pockets of AI essay generators.
I’m sure the SQA is fed up hearing teachers criticising their judgement, but I’ve seen strong reactions from colleagues in the sciences and social subjects, too. I know the SQA did some surveys but I’d like to see the data they collected - I don’t know anyone who wants to go back to the “same old”.
As noble as the principles of Curriculum for Excellence are, the Nationals just don’t match up to them and you either have to do the “two-term dash” (or pretend that you’re doing the two-term dash but really quietly using S3 to give everyone a bit of extra time).
A bugbear of mine is the way N4 is seen by most in education. No one (especially the pupils) values this series of hoop-jumping, mind-numbing tasks. It was designed as a “terminal qualification” but hardly anyone leaves at the end of S4 now and pupils end up being no better prepared for N5 in S5 than they were at the end of S3.
So, why can’t we bring back Standard Grade and let all pupils have equality of opportunity?
In English, Standard Grade would mean beginning the preparation (and coursework) in S3, which would ease the awful rush that pupils face every year to get everything done between August and April. Pupils would be entered into two different levels of exam from a choice of three.
For the uninitiated: the higher Standard Grade level (Credit) was aspirational and the lower one (Foundation) was a safety net - all pupils sat the middle one (General). Very rarely did anyone leave without a qualification and, very often, pupils did better than expected at the highest level they were presented at.
All Standard Grade pupils got the chance to produce a mixed folio of work - I don’t necessarily think it would be good to have as many as Standard Grade did, but I like that it included a critical essay - something that pupils shouldn’t have to write in exam conditions, in my opinion.
The other big selling point of Standard Grade for me was that it included writing in the exam, which encouraged resilience and creativity; pupils needed their wits about them certainly, but it did not preclude any with poor memory retention skills.
I am not an idealist, and I know there would need to be modifications to suit the needs of today, but we should dare to imagine a future where Scottish qualifications are aspirational and not punitive. Standard Grades may have been consigned to the past, but their approach may provide an important guide to the future.
Sammy McHugh is a teacher of English who works in Scotland. She tweets @MsSammyMcHugh
