Yahoo Finance John Swinney accused of presiding over second Covid exams crisis in two years
John Swinney has been forced to deny presiding over a second lockdown school qualifications debacle in two years after hearing evidence of pupils being at “breaking point”.
The Education Secretary, who came close to losing his job over last summer’s exams fiasco, was told his “fingerprints are all over” the mounting scandal.
Mr Swinney was called to the Scottish Parliament on Friday afternoon to answer an urgent question over growing concern about the assessments currently being sat by senior school pupils.
Although teenagers across Scotland were promised they would not have to sit exams this year after immense disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, teachers and students claim the 'alternative assessments' imposed in their place are exams in all but name.
The plan was designed to avoid a repeat of the results day chaos seen last August, when pupils had their results arbitrarily downgraded by a Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) algorithm that disproportionately affected poorer students. SNP ministers were forced into an embarrassing u-turn following widespread outcry.
Instead of heeding the warnings laid out in Professor Priestley’s review of last year’s exams fiasco, Mr Swinney has allowed history to repeat itself and now we’re sleepwalking into a second exam results crisis. pic.twitter.com/vOZHwdjh5W
— Jamie Greene MSP (@jamiegreeneUK) May 14, 2021
But experts have warned that a similar scandal is unfolding, with pupils now forced to sit ‘assessments’ which are being conducted under exam conditions but without study leave or an evenly-spread timetable, meaning that some students are sitting three exams a day and still having to attend normal classes.
Scottish Conservative education spokesman Jamie Greene said the “non-exam exams” had been described as another “unfolding debacle” by Professor Mark Priestley, author of the review into the chaos of the 2020 Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exam diet.
He accused SNP ministers and the SQA of burying their “heads in the sand and refusing to admit that pupils are sitting exams in all but name” and said it was “abundantly clear that history is repeating itself.”
It comes as Connect, a body that represents 2,000 parent councils, described this year’s system as “simply mimicking the very worst elements of the inequitable system that it is replacing”.
One parent complained that her daughter had to sit an “unbelievable” 43 exam-like papers in just five weeks, which “begs the question why no assessment was carried out on the readiness of pupils to undergo an exam diet of this intensity”.
Mr Greene warned that “pupils are at breaking point, teachers are at their wit’s end and parents are furious”.
But Mr Swinney insisted that the judgement of teachers would be paramount to final grades and stressed that these would not be overturned by the SQA.
“The grades will be determined by the judgement of teachers which will be informed by demonstrated attainment of student achievement over a number of assessments rather than an end of year exam,” he said.
Mr Swinney insisted that the “unavoidable second period of remote learning since January” meant that students “are doing assessments over a shorter period of time than first anticipated”.
“To help address this, course work has been reduced in most subjects and schools have been given flexibility over which assessment tools to use to inform teacher judgement of learners’ grades, which will not subsequently be overturned by the SQA,” he added.
However, this flexibility has meant that schools across the country are assessing pupils at different times, and it has emerged that students who have already sat the ‘exams’ have been sharing information about the questions on social media.
And Mr Greene warned of a “widespread belief” in the teaching community that the SQA “are simply circling the wagon so it can place the blame on them”.
.@SSTAtradeunion Teacher judgement has been taken away by the SQA. Teachers are now just administrators of the evidence but will be blamed when it goes wrong.https://t.co/W32X0Tozyd
— Seamus Searson (@searson_seamus) May 12, 2021
Mr Swinney also found himself pressed on the exams by SNP MSP Bob Doris and Scottish Labour’s education spokesman Michael Marra, who said the Education Secretary’s remarks were significantly different to the "lived experience of pupils and teachers” who he said had displayed “real anger” about the situation.
He also announced that an appeals process would soon be revealed, so unhappy pupils can still challenge their final grades.
It comes as catch-up sessions for pupils struggling with reading and maths have been rejected by Scottish government advisers in favour of using recovery money to focus on “wellbeing and play”.
While the Department of Education in England has launched summer schools for secondary pupils, Scottish ministers have announced a “summer of play” to help mitigate the impact of the pandemic.
Lindsay Paterson, professor of education policy at Edinburgh University, warned that “not worrying” about the reading attainment of primary pupils until autumn could “stall their reading progress for nearly two years”.
