New ways of grading students at secondary level during the Covid pandemic could be “undeliverable”, the EIS teaching union is warning MSPs.

And it proposes a radical solution: the cancellation of qualifications for S4 students who plan to stay on in school, which it says would amount to over 90 per cent of the cohort.

National 5 exams are frequently taken by students in S4 but were the first to be cancelled back in October. As with Highers and Advanced Highers, the current plan is for teachers to provide these students with an estimated grade.

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Now the EIS is suggesting that all qualifications taken in S4 - which also typically include internally assessed National 3s and 4s - be abandoned, except for those students who plan to leave school.

This, the union argues, would free teachers up to concentrate on grading S5 and S6 students, given the disruption to face-to-face teaching caused by the latest coronavirus lockdown.

SQA qualifications 2021: Take S4 out of the equation, says union

The EIS says Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) certificates gained in S4 are often overtaken by those gained in the final two years of school - S5 and S6 - and that investing time in assessing and certificating these students is “an unnecessary expense in terms of time and resources given the current severe constraints”.

In a submission to the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, which meets this Wednesday, the EIS says: “A way of alleviating the extreme pressure on the whole system at this time would be to cancel certification for S4 students who are not leaving school at the end of S4 (more than 90 per cent). Certification is not required for their onward progression into S5 and, in many cases, attainment in S5/6 supersedes that obtained in S4. At the very least, local quality assurance for this cohort could be scaled back and plans for SQA sampling scrapped. Certification of the vast majority of S4 candidates in August is an unnecessary expense in terms of time and resources given the current severe constraints.”  

According to the EIS, with each day that passes - and when the majority of senior students continue to work remotely - “there is less time to prepare students adequately for the assessments upon which teachers will base their judgements of provisional results”.

The union says there are several risks associated with this, including that students will sit assessments before they are sufficiently prepared and their performance will be compromised. It also says there is a danger that when students return to face-to-face learning in school they will have “multiple assessments across multiple subjects all within the same tight time frame”.

However, its gravest warning is that the planned exam-replacement system could, ultimately, be “undeliverable” because teachers simply will not have the time “to deliver, mark and quality assure this volume of assessment”.

It fears the situation is particularly dire for practical subjects - the EIS says “it is simply not possible for schools to meet the assessment requirements as they currently sit”.

It hits out at what it says has been tardy decision making by the Scottish government and the SQA, accusing the SQA of being “sluggish” in its response and of “inertia” when it has come to supplying guidance around course content and assessment.

The EIS says: “The lack of timely and complete information and support materials from the SQA has been a constant challenge and source of significant stress for teachers this session. That said, in part, the timing of the actions of the SQA has been bound together with that of the Scottish government, which has also taken too long to deliberate over critical decisions around the cancellation of exams and details of the alternative certification model.”

It calls for the SQA to externally mark assessments carried out by teachers when students are finally able to return to school, in a bid to support school staff. However, the union says the SQA has been “resistant to this from the outset and has remained so throughout discussions around the alternative certification model”.

Now - given the duration of remote learning, which is due to continue for senior phase students until at least Monday 15 March - teachers need “new updates from the SQA around minimum course coverage and on the detail of the SQA national sampling exercise”, it says.

The union also calls for the SQA to produce “additional assessment material”. The body has provided schools with the 2021 exam papers, which it suggests can be sat in part or in their entirety. However, the EIS points out that physical distancing and student absences are likely to mean assessments cannot take place “for all candidates within a course simultaneously” and that, therefore, using the same papers would have implications for the “security of the assessment material”.

It concludes that the challenges teachers face in delivering qualifications are “many and deep” and the support they require “extensive”. That leads it to the recommendation “to cancel certification for S4 students who are not leaving school at the end of S4”.

The EIS makes its comments in a written submission to the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, which is due to take oral evidence on Wednesday from the SQA, Education Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (better known as ADES).