Tick, tick, tick. The clock counts down to Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) results day, and anxiety levels rise among all those who sat exams before the summer. On the big day, their phones ping with a digital delivery of their SQA certificate, while others still prefer the more traditional envelope-based approach.
And then the elation: students and parents beaming at A and B grades needed for university places or sought-after career destinations. Time to call the restaurant and confirm the booking.
Not so for all, sadly. Finding that you’ve missed out on the grades you hoped for will cause some hurt. It will often also necessitate getting back into school that wee bit earlier to meet up with the guidance and Skills Development Scotland staff, to discuss potentially life-changing decisions. Will I return to school and resit, or change courses? Will I use Ucas clearing? Will I give up education and get a job?
Heads and deputes have been in the week before analysing the results (schools get them earlier) and know who is likely to arrive and what advice and emotional support learners will require from the guidance team. Students, and their parents, are highly stressed when expected results don’t materialise - indeed it’s more likely parents that need the time and the comforting necessary to move on.
SQA appeals
Appeals? There was a traditional appeals option during the Covid years but this has been removed again and we are back to a “post-results process”, which is being called “appeals”, based on reviewing the marking process rather than comparing school-based attainment to performance on the day.
More traditional appeal evidence can be submitted for “exceptional circumstances”. However, headteachers are frequently frustrated by differing demands of different subject areas, some insisting on full papers, some more agreeable to wider valid evidence.
So, how many appeals will there be? It’s too early to tell, but perhaps fewer than we expected. Usually, there are concerns raised about marking discrepancies across multiple subjects. This year, only National 5 maths stands out as a subject where certification could be consistently out of kilter with school predictions.
Of further concern among headteachers are grade boundary changes and feeling in the dark about how this affects school and national percentage pass rates.
Papers are set well in advance and, until an exam is sat, no one really knows how candidates will react to the questions. This leads the SQA to sensibly change the grade boundaries (a little) in many subjects every year, something they have always done.
SQA sympathetic to ‘disrupted learning’ during Covid
However, the SQA has to be sympathetic to the continued impact of “disrupted learning” during Covid. It has to balance the need for quality and integrity with the outcry that would emerge if pass rates fell or rose dramatically. So, the question for many schools is this: are these really the results achieved by our children, or are they results that have been modified to ensure a “soft landing” back towards pre-Covid, 2019 levels?
The national publication of results leads to multiple, often highly critical, views being aired each year: of the exams system, of the SQA, of government, of schools, of Curriculum for Excellence. The voices will be even louder this year as we edge closer to the SQA being replaced as the national qualifications agency. (Education secretary Jenny Gilruth, in an exclusive Tes Scotland interview, yesterday gave her thoughts on assessment reform).
Voices will be heard complaining about the “fixing” of results, that making grades go up and down to achieve a “normal pattern” is politically motivated. Headteachers would certainly like to see what learners and schools actually get on the day without “norm-referencing”.
Others may use reduced pass rates as evidence that more investment in Covid recovery is still necessary. Their view is that government investment should have been more targeted to those most at risk of failing exams as a result of non-attendance or significantly reduced attendance.
The annual call for the removal of exams, or at least a more blended approach to assessment, will be reignited, especially given the recent report by Professor Louise Hayward calling for a qualification system that better recognises the myriad individual successes of our learners, beyond merely recalling knowledge and writing quickly in an exam.
The recent Muir, Withers and Hayward reports also stressed the importance of “parity of esteem”: the need to recognise that all the qualifications on the SQA certificates are worthy of equal celebration. Each report noted how crucial using the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework is, as a way to benchmark and demonstrate a comparable understanding of worth.
The biggest concern for schools at this time is that the publication of results comes in two phases. Learners receive their well-deserved individual attainment on results day, but school results are not collated fully until the benchmarking tool Insight is published in September. Indeed the full accumulation of all school learners’ results are not published until February of the following year.
Until that time, different organisations try and gain an understanding of success from the partial data they can glean online - sources that do not have all the information required for full and fair judgements of school attainment and achievement.
Measures of success
Attempts are made to ascertain success through percentage pass rates. Schools under pressure from such benchmarking merely avoid presenting borderline candidates to ensure the pass rate remains higher. Then there is the much-maligned 5+ Highers measure that the national press focuses on.
The issue here is that schools nudge learners into courses that will ensure 5+ attainment, perhaps steering them away from qualifications and experiences more suited to their career aspirations and interests. There are many Foundation Apprenticeships and National Progression Awards that would be better for candidates, yet they are nudged into “safe” Highers to ensure the school doesn’t look like it’s dropping percentage points or league table position.
Society at large must be brave and accept different measures of success, which still retain a robustness of quality and integrity but recognise a parity of esteem. Otherwise, we will continue to have learners undertaking courses that may not be best suited for them.
A number of headteachers have contributed to this article. Above all, they are keen to make clear that those with five Highers, but also those who succeeded in a wealth and breadth of other forms of achievement, all deserve to be beaming with pride.
Peter Bain is executive headteacher of Oban and Tiree schools, vice-president of School Leaders Scotland and chair of the BOCSH group of headteachers
