Scottish Greens Education spokesperson has welcomed an announcement from the Education
Secretary that there will be no Higher and Advanced Higher exams
in 2021.
The Scottish Greens have led calls for school exams to be
cancelled in light of the pandemic, being the first to make this
proposal in May, when it became clear that the 2020/21 school
year would see huge disruption.
said:
“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, unpaid.
"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.”
Ends
On Nov 18th the Scottish Parliament passed Green ‘Safe Schools’
proposals, including a demand for 2,000 additional teachers to be
recruited to cope with the significant additional workload
created as a result of the pandemic: https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/scotland/scottish-government-suffers-defeat-as-msps-back-call-for-2000-more-teachers/
