A senior teacher has blasted the Scottish government’s decision to not make a call on exam’s going ahead until March.

The Ayrshire educator, who wishes to remain nameless, said it highlighted a prominent, underlying issue.

They added: “A lot of the education policy certainly in the last 10 years, it’s not been about children, it’s definitely not been about teachers it’s been about perceptions, maintaining powers and headlines.

“To spend all of that time as students and teachers planning for that exam in May and then potentially being told that that exam won’t go ahead in March, would be an appalling situation to be in.

“I’ve got another three months during which I’ll finish my higher and national five courses, but at the end of that I would have prepared my students as best I can for the final exam so I don’t really see at that point, what would the point of the decision being made then.

“I don’t think it’s got anything to do with anybody’s safety, it’s got a lot to do with just people wanting things to go ahead because it’s the easiest course of action and not necessarily because it’s the best.”

The teacher also explained that the lack of exams recently has highlighted how the current system is becoming outdated, even if the alternative systems put in place had failed.

They said: “There’s such a lack of ideas that nobody really knows what else they could do (other than exams), its not that there aren’t ideas somewhere.

“There’s maybe another political issue, if they don’t have exams back this year then there’ll be a cohort of pupils leaving school in sixth year who’ve never sat real, proper, rigorous SQA exams and it’s not actually done any harm.”

The teacher concluded: “Nobody gets an A for their driving test, you’re either good enough to drive or you’re not good enough to drive and the idea that we need to have grades I think is a little bit outdated.”