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SCOTTISH education should ditch exams for 16-year-olds to help young people succeed, according to a new independent report.
The independent review of qualifications and assessments was commissioned two years ago in the wake of the Scottish Qualifications Authority downgrading the marks of some 125,000 Scottish students, disproportionately hitting working-class learners.
Report author Professor Louise Hayward recommended a “digital profile” for all students to record milestones and plan future learning, and the creation of a new qualification, the Scottish diploma of achievement.
The report also recommends radical changes to assessment.
Final exams, widely understood to discriminate against working-class pupils, would have their use reined in for Highers and Advanced Highers, and ditched for S4s altogether in favour of more continuous assessment.
SNP Education Minister Jenny Gilruth welcomed the report, saying: “I will work together across parties to improve educational outcomes.”
Scotland’s largest teaching union EIS offered broad support for the recommendations, but cautioned that changes needed to be funded.
EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley said: “Everyone involved in Scottish education is eager to move forward with positive change but, as the Hayward Review acknowledges, this will bring additional resource requirements which will require significant additional investment from government.
“We believe that Scotland’s young people are worth it.”
Teaching union NASUWT’s national official Mike Corbett said that any move to remove or reduce exams will need to carefully consider the potential implications for both students and teachers.
“Teachers have past experience of unwieldy and bureaucratic SQA processes around coursework elements, as indeed does the Cabinet Secretary, and such processes must be avoided in any new system,” he said.
“Placing greater emphasis on personal achievements and extra-curricular activities through a Scottish diploma, while perhaps helping us to move away from a system dominated by high-stakes exams, also has the potential to disadvantage pupils from lower-income backgrounds if not handled carefully and sensitively.”
