We still await confirmation of how the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) is going to amend courses and exams in 2020-21, in response to the many challenges of the coronavirus. They were due this week, but the SQA will somehow have to reflect the 23,000 people who responded to its consultation in the 10 days or so it was open.

I was not at all happy with the proposals for the sciences, which amounted to nothing other than a return to the shorter-format examination papers of a few years ago. Having lost about a month of teaching time, simply taking 30 minutes out of the exam does nothing at all to help students or teachers. The notion that this reduces work for staff as they will be able to write shorter prelims is laughable. If anything, this will create work as prelims will need to be rewritten to match the shortened format.

Failing to recognise that Covid procedures in schools are making practical work exceptionally difficult to conduct, the lack of a decision to remove the assignment components of science courses does nothing to reduce pressure on students or teachers. Such a decision might have freed up some time to allow courses to be better covered in the reduced time available.

Background: Huge response to SQA consultation on 2021 exams

SQA exams: Heads’ group calls for cancellation and shortening of 2021 exams

SQA appeals: ‘No student should be disadvantaged’

Children’s commissioner: ‘SQA results failed students’

Other options that might have been considered include:

• Reformatting exams to include a mix of mandatory and optional questions, allowing schools to decide which content to leave out in order to compensate for the time lost under lockdown.
• Delaying the exam diet until June to allow greater time to complete courses.
• Specifying content in courses to be removed to allow the remaining content to be covered effectively.
• In other subjects, proposed changes include removal of coursework components (reduced folio in English) or sections of courses (speaking in English), with no reduction in the examination duration.

Another major concern is about the worth of the consultation exercise at all. With SQA having made it very difficult to understand the related documentation - it is loaded with edu-jargon and emphatically not for the lay reader - it made it very difficult for students or their parents to respond to the survey.

What will SQA exams look like in 2021?

And, while many teachers will have responded to the consultation, the limited time available between the release of the proposals on 14 August and the closure of the survey on 24 August will have limited the number and extent of responses. The plan for SQA to confirm its finalised arrangements during the week beginning 31 August gave little cause to believe that much attention will be paid to the survey responses.

I sincerely hope that the SQA will do the right thing, listening to teachers, students and parents, and come up with a fair and workable set of modifications. My experience of the workings of the SQA, however, leads me to expect something far from ideal.

The writer is a secondary teacher in Scotland