IT is with some relief that I read of the serious, if somewhat belated, concerns expressed by some headteachers regarding the new exam system designed to assess the Curriculum for Excellence ("Teacher in 'disaster' warning over exam changes", The Herald, February 3).
I say "relief" because I've been wondering when headteachers would finally speak up and publicly express the fears and misgivings that have been reported to them, on a daily basis, by hard-pressed members of staff.
As a recently retired principal teacher of more than 36 years' experience, I can safely say that the new exam system that was introduced in 2014 cannot, in any way, be regarded as an improvement on what we had.
Since the late 1970s, most of the changes to exams in Scotland were regarded by teachers as being necessary and better for the pupils - for example, the introduction of Standard Grades and, some years later, Higher Still. However, the new National Qualifications are proving to be a very retrograde step. In S4 we now have far fewer numbers of pupils actually sitting external exams as these are reserved only for those studying National 5 courses, and even then not all, as National 5 Physical Education has no external exam. All the other S4 pupils have their National 3 and National 4 qualifications assessed and passed by their classroom teachers. They do not even get an invitation to the exam party.
This is why I totally endorse Derrick Hannan, headteacher of Braidhurst High, when he says: "We have created a group of pupils who feel a total lack of any sense of self-worth." The biggest mistake made by those who designed this new exam structure was to exclude thousands of pupils from the valuable experience of sitting the same exam, on the same day, at the same time as all their peers throughout Scotland. It is indeed a disgrace that many pupils will leave Scottish secondary schools never having sat any formal, external exams.
Those who made a very nice living out of creating the industry that surrounds Curriculum for Excellence should now have the courage to stand up and admit that they got the qualifications structure very wrong indeed. The pressure on teaching staff throughout the introduction of the new National exams was crippling and this is being replicated this year with the introduction of new Highers and next year with new Advanced Highers. This crazy situation must stop before staff, already stressed to breaking point, start to seek help from their GP.
All this pressure might have been worth it had the new curriculum and its new exam structure been heralded as a great leap forward in Scottish education. However, apart from those who are blind to its faults or who have a vested interest in its continuance, most of us see it for what it is, a poorly thought-out and bungled attempt to fix something that wasn't really very much broken to begin with.
Alan Carroll,
24 The Quadrant,
Clarkston, Glasgow.
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