By Alex Neil
NO nation can afford to threaten the life chances of its young people and expect to prosper. The turmoil caused to so many by the SQA’s downgrading fiasco has been a nightmare for all the young people affected. I welcome the First Minister’s admission that the Scottish Government “got it wrong” and her commitment to putting it right.
While I hope that John Swinney’s statement to Parliament today will begin to rectify the mistakes made by the SQA’s inadequate and unfair grading system, I believe the best way to do that is by reversing all downgrades.
Tomorrow it will be the turn of Fiona Robertson, Chief Executive of SQA, to explain to the Scottish Parliament’s Education Committee what went so catastrophically wrong with the pupils’ assessments, which replaced this year’s exams.
As Professor Lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh University has pointed out, the grading system has failed the three key tests of; fairness, integrity and safety. He points out that the assessments “are about the school rather than the individual pupil. It means if you are an outstanding pupil in a poorer attaining school, you will have had your result dragged down. And if you are an average student in a good performing school, it is likely you have benefited.”
In all exam categories, youngsters living in the 20 per cent most deprived areas were nearly two and a half times more likely to have their results downgraded than those in the more affluent areas. This is completely unacceptable.
With the threat of cancellation still a possibility for next year’s exams, we must ensure that what happened this year, never happens again. Lessons must be learned and learned fast.
One of the factors which appeared to influence the extent to which teachers’ recommendations for individual pupils were downgraded was to ensure that the overall increase in pass rates since last year didn’t undermine the credibility of the system.
Tragically, there is little doubt that the scale and flawed rationale of the SQA’s downgrading exercise has done far more damage to the credibility of the system than an inflated increase in the annual, overall pass rate would have done.
The SQA chief executive has many questions to answer:
Why was a grading system devised under a veil of secrecy? Why were warnings from the Education Committee that such a process risked the credibility of the entire exercise ignored? Why was the grading system biased against schools in deprived neighbourhoods, thus undermining the Scottish Government’s number one aim of reducing the attainment gap?
Depending on what John Swinney announces today, there may still be questions to ask about how any outstanding downgrade issues are to be dealt with, the details of the appeals system if one is still needed and whether it will genuinely rectify all the injustices caused by the downgrading fiasco. Will there be independent supervision of any appeals process?
Will the SQA guarantee that the appeals system won’t be artificially manipulated to keep the overall pass rate below a certain level and that the appeals will be based solely on the performance of individual pupils?
As distraught parents and pupils wait anxiously to hear what is going to happen next, we need assurances from the SQA, that they will do everything in their power to bring some much-needed fairness and justice to the young people affected by this whole episode along with an assurance that this will never happen again.
Alex Neil is SNP MSP for Airdrie and Shotts
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