Chamber and committees

The directors said it last week. The EIS said it. The trade unions were very clear: questions were asked, and people did not like them being asked.

Was the impact of the pandemic the only reason for the inconsistency? Were there no other reasons for a different application by different teachers in different schools? Are you sure that it was all to do with the pandemic?

The directors who were before us last week and the Educational Institute of Scotland acknowledged that the historical performance in schools was used in providing feedback. Are you denying that completely?

Hold on a second. Let me conclude. That pressure was not on previously better-performing schools. Why was that appropriate, even in an advisory or feedback loop? Why was that ever allowed to happen? Surely we learned the lessons from the previous year.

You said that historical attainment did not have a role

“from the perspective of the SQA.”

However, it is clear that historical data did have a role in the system. If a question was asked whether a pupil or a class was out of line with previous performance, a question was asked. Even if it did not lead to the SQA changing a result, that put pressure on the teacher, the class or the school to question whether the result was right. That never applied to better-performing schools, where a poorly performing pupil was never questioned, because the school was sticking in with historical performance. Even though you never asked and you never moderated, the system did, and you allowed that to happen. It was your system, so surely you should take responsibility for that.

You have said that your pupils should be proud of their achievement and have full confidence in the results, but I want to know how you know that. In advance of the committee meeting, the SQA submitted a document that says that the results this year cannot be compared with previous years, but it goes on to say that people should have confidence in the system that produced those exact results. I wonder whether there is an inconsistency there. Why have you published those results if people should not draw definitive conclusions from them?

You asked teachers and schools to provide evidence of their pupils’ performance. Different teachers approached that in different ways. The approach differed between schools and between subjects for the assessments and qualifications in the past year. You said that that was to allow flexibility to cope with the impact of the pandemic. Particular outbreaks in schools were one impact. Are you sure that that is the only reason why the evidence guidance was applied in different ways in different schools?

Just as a follow-up to that, there was criticism from the EIS but also from some—[Inaudible.] The criticism from the EIS, in particular, was that the SQA was saying that these were assessments but it was reverting to a more traditional model. What is your view on that?

As a final follow-up, there have been some claims that this year and the previous year can teach us a lot about what we are going to do with assessments and exams in future years—is that true or not? You have indicated already that any model in the future would not be like this, so I wonder what we can learn for the future from the past two years.

The EIS and pupils have criticised the fact that the assessments were, in effect, exams by another name. The EIS, in particular, was critical of the SQA’s advice in that it was, in effect, reverting to a model of exams but was calling them assessments. What is your view on that?

Thanks for the evidence so far. I want to focus on the stress for pupils and teachers. It is often claimed by pupils that an assessment model is less stressful than a big-hit exam, but we also heard from pupils that the model this time meant repeated assessments, which for some were just as stressful, especially for those who did not get the results in the first assessments that they did and had to do them over and over again. I wonder whether the claim that assessments are generally less stressful than big-hit exams is true, or was what happened peculiar to this year?