Secondary school staff all over Scotland have been busy sorting all of those students who would have been due to sit exams this year into “refined bands” before attempting to place all in a rank-order.

As part of these arrangements around the estimated grades process, the decision of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to send to every school its three-year attainment data was potentially revealing. Remember, we were told that teachers’ judgement about actual and inferred attainment would be a “core element” that would inform the whole estimated grades process.

What might be inferred, though, from its issuing of this data? On one level, this might be seen as a reflection that attainment has been found to fall into broad patterns and that, therefore, the data sent to schools is nothing other than an important aid in arriving at those final rankings. On another level, it might be seen as the context within which SQA will seek to “refine” the “core element” of teacher judgement in order to ensure that overall attainment patterns conform to that three-year trend.

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None of this, of course, may be a cause for any concern. However, I was struck by a paragraph in a book I’ve been reading, Alex’s Adventures In Numberland: Dispatches from the wonderful world of mathematics by Alex Bellos. Discussing the bell curve - the way of representing the most common spread of possible outcomes and their likelihood of occurring - he writes: “The desire to see the bell curve in data is perhaps most strongly felt in education...Exams are specifically designed in the hope that the distribution of results replicates the bell curve as much as possible - irrespective of whether or not this is an accurate reflection of real intelligence.”

Coronavirus: The importance of teacher judgement on grades

As we number-crunch away, rank-ordering our pupils for eventual transmission to SQA, we might take comfort from whatever support and additional evidence is provided. However, none of this must in any way undermine the importance of teacher judgement, especially in relation to judgements about “inferred attainment”.

In our school, I have been keen to remind staff that various factors might inform this process, including the myriad support which, in normal circumstances, we would provide to our young people as they approach the exams. With this support, students can raise their game, and we should factor that into assessing their prospects.

Of course, although the whole estimated grades process is taking up a significant amount of time within the secondary sector at the moment, other pressing priorities exist, not the least of which relates to the issue of exactly what school should look like when we return.

I am encouraged that a consensus seems to be emerging around the realisation that, unless we attend to the health and wellbeing of staff and pupils before all else, then our subsequent efforts to get back to teaching and learning may be seriously hampered. One could imagine that the tenor of discussions might have taken a different policy course, with calls for pupils to “hit the ground running” in order to “catch up”, but I have not detected that this has been the case, certainly in Scotland.

Many staff will have experienced serious levels of dislocation, stress and anxiety during the period of lockdown and they will require support and reassurance as they return to school and prepare for our new educational reality.

Glasgow City Council’s education service has produced an excellent discussion paper called Recovery, Resilience and Reconnecting. The emphasis is very much on the need for time for staff to reconnect and reflect on their experience of lockdown, and it suggests some questions:

• What is the senior leadership team’s vision for the session ahead?
• What has been individuals’ experience?
• Have there been significant events, including bereavement and loss?
• What have been the challenges?
• What have colleagues learned? What changes can be embedded?
• What are you proud of?
• What can be celebrated?
• What are you looking forward to?

Only after such discussions have taken place, in an open and honest way, will it be appropriate to begin considering teaching and learning issues.

Let’s make a real commitment to the health and wellbeing of staff and build in time for all of the above issues to be discussed and addressed. Being together again in our staff teams will be a powerful experience, one in which the fundamental importance of relationships will be reinforced. As EM Forster famously wrote: “Only connect.”

Ian Anderson is the headteacher of Bellahouston Academy in Glasgow