Scotland’s exam results day may be fast approaching but let’s be wary of any “back to normal” narratives.
Yes, national Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exams took place towards the end of the last school year, for the first time since 2019.
And, yes, this year sees a return to something like the pre-results day we were all so accustomed to before Covid, as envelopes and text messages on Tuesday morning deliver, at a stroke, good or bad news. In 2021, of course, students went off on their summer holidays already (pretty much) knowing how they’d done on their SQA courses.
Yet, for all that the national exams system has made a comeback, this is still not a post-Covid results day. The pandemic will, for the third year in a row, have had a huge impact on SQA results.
The 2021-22 school year was not remotely “normal”, if you use a pre-pandemic reality as your baseline. Covid-related student and staff absences were a constant source of disruption, even if the Omicron variant did not have quite the devastating impact initially feared.
And the SQA appears to be taking that into account in working out this year’s results.
In 2020 and 2021, when teachers’ judgement was ultimately key to students’ results, attainment rates went up and attainment gaps between rich and poor were narrower than before Covid. The danger was that a return to national exams would reverse all that - at a time, of course, when the Scottish government is under intense scrutiny for its record in closing the attainment gap.
All indications are, however, that attainment rates will fall somewhere between 2019 and 2021 levels, with the SQA adapting its approach to exam and course grading to take into account the impact of Covid. More details around that will emerge on Tuesday.
That approach is intended to give a sense of stability but there’s a certain irony here. If the SQA has taken an active decision to effectively ensure results do not veer too far away from the previous two years of Covid, it may well produce fairer results - but it also shows how students’ exam results depend on factors far beyond their own control.
In each of the four years from 2018-19 to 2021-22, there have been quite different sets of circumstances when it comes to Covid and how SQA results are then produced. Accordingly, attainment levels have fluctuated.
So, for example, a student’s S5 Higher results have been determined not only by their own performance at Higher but also by the year in which they happened to do their Highers. Students have been, to some degree, at the whim of the ebb and flow of a global pandemic and the subsequent decisions taken by education policymakers and organisations.
The narrower an education system’s methods for judging success, the more you are at the mercy of decisions taken by those who preside over such methods.
The answer advanced by some is to move away from the age-old use of five Highers as the barometer of success to some sort of “leaving certificate”. In other words, when you leave school, everything notable you have achieved in your time there is recorded - Higher results, yes, but a whole lot more besides.
Professor Louise Hayward’s ongoing review of qualifications and assessment in Scotland and the “national conversation” on education reform - set out by by education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville in June - have opened the door to those who want to see exam reform. And, with the SQA due to be replaced by a successor body in 2024, it looks like now or never, if the current generation of educators really wants to banish the “two-term dash” through five exam-based courses taken as the overriding measure of success at school.
This year’s exam results have been calibrated to make them fairer than might have been the case. True fairness, however, lies in creating a system where success is measured by far more than exam performance.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes
Find Tes Scotland’s coverage of SQA exam results day 2022 on our website and by following us on Twitter: @TesScotland @Henry_Hepburn and @Emma_Seith
