Nicola Sturgeon has opened the door to fundamental exams reform, after questioning whether this week’s SQA results controversy shows students would be better served by results based on teachers’ judgement.
The first minister also urged students whose Scottish Qualifications Authority results were downgraded to appeal their results, amid ongoing controversy over those from more deprived areas being more likely to receive lower grades from the SQA than those estimated by their teachers.
Even before this week’s events, education secretary and deputy first minister John Swinney said in a Tes Scotland podcast in July that there was “a really strong argument” for reforming exams.
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Ms Sturgeon, speaking as she took questions following her daily coronavirus briefing today, said there was “a debate to be had, I am sure, about whether it is exams or teacher assessments that are the best way of deciding a young person’s performance”.
She added that “if we’ve had for seven years a situation where exam results have led to a 65 per cent pass rate amongst the 20 per cent most deprived, but teacher assessments lead to a suggested 85 per cent pass rate, there is legitimate debate in there as to, well, which is the best way of doing that in future”.
Ms Sturgeon said: “I’m not shying away from these questions [around exams reform], but I’m asking people who want to pose these hard questions and have that debate, fine - but don’t lose sight of this really important [appeals] part of this year’s process.”
Ms Sturgeon said young people were “entitled to be angry” about being downgraded and “to feel that this is not just”, adding that “the government will listen carefully to that” and urging them to use the free appeals process that is operating this year.
She added: “But please don’t lose sight of the next part of the process [which] is not a statistical model.
“This is the part of the process that looks at your individual circumstances, and if you did well in your prelim but have got a result that is lower than that, that gets looked at. If you’ve done coursework that your teacher thinks is relevant, that is what is looked at - this is the bit of the process that is about looking at your individual circumstances.”
Ms Sturgeon said that if lots of appeals are upheld, “it will show that that process has worked as intended”.
The appeals process, she said, would be “about ensuring that individual injustices could be identified and rectified”.
She added that “the SQA are resourced to deal with a significantly higher number of appeals...given the circumstances this year”.
