SCOTTISH pupils will not sit Highers or Advanced Highers next year, John Swinney has confirmed.
The Education Secretary's announcement to the Scottish Parliament follows concerns that allowing the tests to take place would disproportionately impact pupils in the most deprived areas of the country.
Swinney told parliament that pupils had lost significant amount of teaching time due the pandemic, with poorer communities suffering more.
He said it was a question of fairness.
Next year’s National 5 exams had already been cancelled and will be replaced with teacher-estimated grades after Swinney said holding a full diet would be “simply too big a risk” amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking in the Scottish Parliament, he explained “the level of disruption to learners has not been equal”, with pupils from poorer backgrounds more likely to miss school to self-isolate.
Swinney said: “I will not stake the future of our Higher pupils – whether they get a place at college, university, training or work – on a lottery of whether their school was hit by Covid.
“Exams cannot account for differential loss of learning and could lead to unfair results for our poorest pupils.
“This could lead to pupils’ futures being blighted through no fault of their own. That is simply not fair.”
He added: “While we hope that public health will improve in the coming months, we cannot guarantee that there will be no further disruption to pupils’ learning.
“In light of this, the question is less whether we can hold the exams safely in the spring and more whether we can do so fairly.
“However, there is no getting around the fact that a significant percentage of our poorest pupils have lost significantly more teaching time than other pupils.
“Changing the exams for all does not – and cannot – address that. Instead, we need a model that is more flexible to the specific circumstances of the individual pupil.”
No algorithm will be used to adjust results after the backlash at this year’s moderation process that disproportionately downgraded pupils from poorer backgrounds, Swinney said.
He added: “We will adopt the new model that has been developed and base awards on teacher judgement of evidence of learner attainment.
“This is safe. It is fair. And it better recognises the reality of the disruption so many pupils have already had to their learning.”
Scottish Greens Education spokesperson Ross Greer welcomed the announcement, saying: “The Scottish Greens have called for all 2021 exams to be cancelled since it became clear in May that the level of disruption would make a fair exam diet impossible, so today’s announcement is overdue but welcome.
“It provides the clarity that teachers, parents and, most importantly, pupils had demanded.
“What’s essential now is that the Education Secretary stops the SQA repeating its approach to National 5 assessments with the Higher and Advanced Highers.
“Despite Mr Swinney’s categorical assurances to me earlier this year, the SQA has created a system which has massively added to teachers’ workloads, essentially expecting them to take on the huge additional work of an SQA marker.
"Given that Scotland’s school system was already dependent on an average of eleven hours of overtime per teacher per week, this will push many beyond their breaking point and simply cannot be allowed to happen.”
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