The chief executive of a national parents’ organisation has hit out at proposed changes to the 2021 exams in Scotland, describing them as “gobbledygook for your average person” and calling for more radical thinking and creativity.
Eileen Prior, the director of Connect - formerly the Scottish Parent Teacher Council - also questioned why the by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) was planning to publish its conclusions ahead of Professor Mark Priestley’s independent review of the results debacle this year.
Speaking to Tes Scotland, Ms Prior said: “Are we having a review that is going to influence or are we not, because those dates do not stack up.”
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This week the SQA’s two consultations on how national qualifications would run in Scotland this year closed after teachers, parents and pupils had been given less than a fortnight to respond.
All confirmed modifications to course assessments and the 2021 exam timetable are expected to be released next week, with Professor Priestley’s review due to report towards the end of September.
Ms Prior accused the Scottish government and the SQA of clinging to the traditional examination system while effectively ignoring the views of young people and their parents.
“I have read the consultations and don’t know how a young person is supposed to make head nor tail of them,” said Ms Prior. “I have expressed my massive, massive disappointment to the SQA.
“The end users of qualifications are not schools, it is the young people and their parents who support them. Yet they were given days to respond to this and it’s gobbledygook for your average person.
“It’s simply not good enough. Given all that they have gone through in the last few months, young people should have been front and centre but instead, the focus remains on the system.”
The Scottish government has admitted its handling of this year’s results was too focused on the “overall system” and not enough on individual pupils. Ms Prior suggested they were in danger of repeating that mistake.
She added: “It’s all about the credibility and the validity of the exams, but where are we with that at the moment? I would say we are not in a good place so why don’t we look properly at what we can achieve?
“We can’t just hold on to the way we have always done it. These pupils have already missed weeks of the curriculum - they are already behind. Yes, the time scales are impossible, but this situation is impossible.
“As usual there is a lack of creativity and radical thinking - that just does not seem to exist in our system.”
In April, the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) started calling for next year’s exams to be cancelled - a call that was echoed by the EIS which was advocating for national qualifications to be based on a combination of teacher judgement and continuous assessment.
Ms Prior said: “We have used teacher estimates this year and have focused on the whole assessment process providing more of the information about a young person’s performance. There surely has to be some more focus on that this coming year.”
