An end to Scotland’s system of exams is essential, a national parents’ body Scottish education has said.
Connect says that, after the Covid pandemic led to a “desperate spiral of increased high-stakes assessment”, the “fundamental inequity” of Scotland’s exams system was laid bare.
In its submission to the Muir review - a major consultation on the future of assessment, inspection and curriculum development - Connect says there is a “desperate need” for change.
The qualifications awarded during the pandemic, using alternative forms of assessment, had “failed repeatedly to be equitable and to recognise the extreme circumstances experienced by young people over this time and, most damning, has shone a light on the fundamental inequity baked into the exam system as we knew it”.
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Connect says: “Other countries operate successfully without a diet of exams which is damaging and demoralising for many young people.”
It adds: “The health and wellbeing of young people must come first - we only learn when we are physically and mentally well.”
Connect says that during the Covid pandemic, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and the government had “alienated very many parents, carers and young people” as students had been “forced into a desperate spiral of increased high-stakes assessment, combined with [Covid] restrictions in school and often significant periods of school absence and remote learning”.
The Connect submission says: “The desperate need for change is clear for all who have any stake in improving the circumstances of all young people.”
It also says that, “contrary to commonly held views” in government and national agencies, Connect surveys of parents showed that “not all parents support the external exam system we currently have”, which is “from a bygone age and was designed to serve a very different world”.
Connect also notes that many further education establishments had moved away from handwritten exams, towards digital and open-book assessments instead.
*Read the full Connect submission here
