Changes to courses put in place to compensate for the disruption caused by the pandemic will stay in place next year, Scotland’s exam body has confirmed.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) made significant modifications to course assessments for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher courses, as well as some National 3 and National 4 courses, at the beginning of the 2020-21 academic year.
It was a move designed to reduce the volume of assessment and ease the workload of learners, teachers and lecturers.
Now, the SQA has confirmed that these changes - which remained in place for 2021-22 - will also be applied in 2022-23.
For example, this school year, students taking Higher English had to complete less coursework, while in Higher maths they were told certain topics would not be assessed.
Today’s news that such changes will remain in 2022-23 is being welcomed by Scotland’s teaching unions, who say the pupils due to embark on their qualifications have suffered the most disruption to their education.
Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said: “We’re content that the current streamlined courses remain for next year - this offers some stability, and also many students now coming into the qualification framework have suffered significant disruption.”
This was echoed by Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, who said that students moving into the exam years now had often been without a teacher more frequently because students in upper secondary had been prioritised by schools when staff absence peaked in March.
He said: “[Young people] in S1, S2 and S3 have missed out the most over the last couple of years of the pandemic. They were not inducted properly into secondary and, where there has been a shortage of teachers, exam classes have taken precedence.”
Mr Searson said that education recovery would take years and added that there was a case for keeping the modifications in place beyond 2022-23.
He added: “The groundwork skills that [young people] would have covered in the first three years are not there - their education has been disrupted and, often, they have ended up with supply teachers or sent home in some instances. We have to make allowances for these pupils - it can’t be business as usual, we are nowhere near that.”
Fiona Robertson, SQA chief executive and Scotland’s chief examiner, said the decision to retain the modifications had been made “after careful consideration”.
She added: “The effects of the disruption will not go away after the summer break. Carrying the assessment modifications forward into the new academic year will help to provide some certainty for learners, teachers and lecturers and help free up more time for learning and teaching of the course content, while maintaining the integrity and credibility of their qualifications.”
However, Mr Flanagan said that, as well as the modification to courses remaining in place, the exam reforms underway in Scotland should be “accelerated”.
Mr Flanagan said that if one of Professor Hayward’s recommendations was for students to bypass exams in S4 if they are staying on in school beyond that, it ”doesn’t need a big lead-in time”.
An OECD report published in November said that Scotland could consider ”‘decluttering’ the historical diets of examinations” in upper secondary. Scotland could look “to remove National 5 examinations at 16 (S4)” and move to “a school graduation certificate or diploma”.
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