Students who believe their teacher-estimated grade awarded in this year’s SQA results is incorrect or unfair feel their “rights have been abrogated” because they need the backing of their school to appeal, say MSPs.

MSPs who sit on the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee raised the issue with the education secretary, John Swinney, today.

Labour education spokesperson Iain Gray told Mr Swinney that students who disagreed with their teacher estimate had no recourse because “the sole route of appeal is by the examination centre - ie, the school - which, in these circumstances, the young people are appealing against”.

Background: SQA to respond to all appeals by the end of September

Campaign: ‘No student should be disadvantaged’

Children’s commissioner: ‘SQA results failed students’

More from today’s committee: SQA exams update delayed after rise in Covid cases

SQA exams: Was this the day we learned that 2021 exams won’t go ahead?

Daniel Johnson, also a Labour MSP, pursued the issue with Mr Swinney, saying that students who felt “evidence or circumstances” had not been taken into account in their estimated grades required “the consent” of their school to put in an appeal - even though the appeal risked highlighting that the school’s own “estimation process was incomplete”.

SQA results: Controversy over appeals system

Mr Swinney, however, argued that because students wishing to make an appeal against Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) grades would require evidence, they would have no choice but to work with their schools. He said that appeals were “most effectively undertaken when young people do that in partnership with their schools”.

He added that there was also an appeal route for young people who believed they had been subject to discrimination. However, Mr Johnson pointed out that to access this, students still needed their school’s backing.

Mr Swinney said: “If a case can be put together that assesses some form of prejudice or disadvantage or discrimination that was experienced by a young person then that can be the subject of appeal, and that opportunity has been available to young people as a consequence of the opportunities for appeal that have been put in place by the SQA in these very, very difficult circumstances.”

The appeals system put in place by the SQA allowed for appeals under three different sets of circumstances - but they included no direct right to appeal for students.

Children’s commissioner Bruce Adamson has criticised “the lack of an appeals system directly accessible to young people, including those who disagreed with their teachers’ estimate”.

Dr Tracy Kirk - a legal academic who specialises in children and youth rights - has also been vocal about the system’s shortcomings, saying that students have “quite literally been left out of a process that is about them and their futures”. She has urged the Scottish government to widen the appeals process “so those who have been disproportionately disadvantaged have redress instead of feeling left behind”. 

She says that students who have suffered include those who were absent from school for a significant period due to cancer treatment, mental illness and other medical conditions, as well as those who were being home educated.

Following Mr Swinney’s comments in the Scottish Parliament today, Dr Kirk tweeted that she was still getting messages “from students who feel lost and as if their futures have been adversely impacted as a result of Covid-19 as the SQA does not provide them with grounds to appeal”.

All appeals had to be submitted by schools and colleges by 7 September, with the SQA promising outcomes by the end of this month. The result of priority appeals were scheduled for 4 September.