Last years’ SQA exam fiasco – where the poorest pupils results were marked down simply because they were poorer than other kids – exposed much about the problems with the way Scottish education is run.
Heads should have rolled and lessons should have been learned.
Instead the same top brass in the Scottish Government and the SQA are presiding over a second year of exams chaos – only with this one they had plenty of time to plan.
In fact, the author of the Independent Review into what went wrong last year has called the current process an ‘unfolding debacle’. He is right.
Across Scotland today young people are going into exam halls with exam invigilators, turning over exam papers and sitting exams.
Yet the First Minister and her hapless Education Secretary (who has now been removed) are asking pupils and teachers to close their eyes, turn off their brains and to join them in pretending that no exams are taking place at all.
The Scottish Government have managed to extract and condense all of the worst elements of ‘normal’ exams and kept none of the potential benefits.
There is significant extra stress for young people, who must complete the assessments without being taught the course and without study leave.
They fear their chances of going to college and university have been scuppered. Incredibly - even though many of the exams have already been sat - there is still no appeals process in place. Young people and their teachers are engaging with a process that they have no idea how it will conclude.
Over recent days in Parliament, the previous Education Secretary continued to deny any problem exists despite detailed questions and evidence presented to him from across the chamber.
My inbox is full of emails from distraught teachers who see their pupils falling short of what they should achieve, their life chances being wasted, yet with no means of being able to help them.
The process is set and the exams (that are of course not exams…) will determine the result. The Education Minister put his head in the sand and dug in to pretend this crisis is not happening. So what can be done to fix this dreadful situation from here?
Firstly, we need to see urgent clarity around the appeals process. The Scottish Government need to publish their plan as soon as possible.
Secondly, work needs to be done with colleges and universities to ensure that young people don’t miss out on places.
Lastly, the Scottish Government should implement Labour’s ‘resit guarantee’ which would allow impacted pupils - from this year or last – to re-sit qualifications for free at college with all the support they need.
The Scottish Government should and could have avoided the mess of last year. It was simply unthinkable - and now unforgivable - that they have made the same mistakes once more. Our plan is to give our young people hope. At the end of this dreadful year they surely deserve it.
