On Radio Scotland on Monday morning, concerns about this year’s assessment situation were explored in detail. The item concluded with a perfunctory mention of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) having been asked on for an interview, only for it to respond in time-honoured fashion: no one was available.

It’s been that way since the Covid crisis began. The SQA doesn’t do media interviews. The only time you’re likely to see any of its high heidyins speak publicly is when, on occasion, they’re hauled before the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, or if a bland and written-by-committee video clip appears on the SQA Twitter stream.

What lies behind such an apparently self-destructive approach? Is it a lack of confidence in itself? Institutional high-handedness? A symptom of a cumbersome organisation ill-suited to acting swiftly in a crisis? Does it betray a lack of confidence from the government in the SQA (certainly, John Swinney, as education secretary, positioned himself in front of the SQA last year to take the brickbats for the 2020 qualifications fiasco)?

The SQA’s lack of communication on assessment

Whatever the reasons, the aloofness of the SQA has only served to ramp up the concerns of all those education staff and students who, in their schools, colleges and homes, have been trying to salvage what they can from a qualifications crisis that has now been unfolding for 15 months.

Of course, no one in any walk of life could truly have been prepared for Covid and there are good people involved in the SQA who have been doing the best they can. At an institutional level, however, there appears to be something very wrong - and it goes beyond poor communication.

It is in times of crisis that you often see the best in people; hidden qualities emerge and transform the perception of certain organisations for the better. Sadly, that has not been the case with the SQA.

Rather than springing into action, it has been sputtering through the gears without ever getting going - the latest sign of that being the repeated delays to publication of details about this year’s appeals process, which were originally due by early May.

Last year, many hoped, the silver lining was that - after Covid had laid bare the deep flaws and inherent inequality in the qualifications system - crisis would bring about fundamental change for the better.

The mood has changed: much of that optimism has slipped away and the debate about long-term exam reform has died down. As one school leader said to Tes Scotland: “Are we seriously just going to revert back to what was there before?”

For now, the focus - rightly - is on the ongoing accumulation of evidence for determining grades, on teachers helping students salvage what they can from this most problematic of years. This week, even Seamus Searson - who, as general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, has been one of the SQA’s most outspoken critics - did not get behind calls to sack the SQA board forthwith, arguing that, for now, every ounce of energy should be put into helping students through the next few weeks.

But what comes afterwards? It seems like the best the SQA can hope for is simmering rancour from teachers and students; the worst, some sort of huge backlash.

Whatever happens, it will always seem bizarre that the SQA did not do more to “control the narrative” ; that its top brass did not front up and speak publicly about the processes they were working through in an attempt to instil confidence in those at the sharp end of the Covid qualifications crisis.

At this stage, the strong suspicion is that this is more than a flawed communications strategy - that the stony silence of the SQA is, instead, symptomatic of a far deeper malaise.

@Henry_Hepburn

This article originally appeared in the 28 May 2021 issue under the headline “SQA’s self-destructive silence on grades crisis is difficult to fathom”