A few days ago I made a prediction about this year’s exam results.
I said that pass rates would go down and, crucially, that the gap between rich and poor would be increased.
I added that this wasn’t going to happen by chance either. But rather as a direct and deliberate consequence of decisions made by both the SQA and the SNP/Green government.
Yesterday, when the results were finally released, I was proven right.
In fact, the only part I’d got wrong was that I had underestimated the degree to which the historic attainment gap between pupils in the wealthiest and most deprived areas of Scotland would be restored.
Over the years I’ve revealed a whole host of things about the Scottish education system that the government and SQA would rather you didn’t know.
I have an incredibly low bar by which I judge these organisations when it comes to the treatment of pupils, especially the poorest pupils.
But even I didn’t think they would go this far.
Even I didn’t think they would display this much contempt for Scotland’s most deprived young people.
Attainment gap in Scotland has widened again
The data is devastatingly clear.
At Higher level, for example, the attainment gap rocketed from eight points in 2021 to 15 points this year.
This has almost reinstated the pre-pandemic divide between the richest and poorest pupils.
Overall, the pass rate dropped by nearly nine points in state schools, but just four points in private ones.
Those running the show are desperately trying to spin all of this by telling us that we should really be comparing the results to 2019, the last ‘pre-pandemic’ year in which exams took place as normal.
This isn’t just incorrect, it is deliberately and disgracefully dishonest.
The students who received their exam results yesterday had been through just as much (and in many cases much more) Covid disruption as in the previous two years.
This is not a post-Covid set of results by any stretch of the imagination.
And trying to compare the numbers to pre-Covid stats, all for the benefit of spineless politicians, is utterly unjustifiable.
Having treated thousands of kids with contempt, they’re not treating the rest of us like idiots.
SQA and Scottish Government should be ashamed
In 2022, the poorest students are being punished for the fact that their peers did so much better in both 2020 and 2021.
And it didn’t need to happen.
We’ve had two years where we rewarded students for their work throughout the year.
And as a consequence of that approach lots of young people got to go to university and college courses they would otherwise have missed out on.
What we can see now is that, to the SQA and the Scottish Government, that progress was in fact some sort of terrible injustice that must now be corrected.
Utterly shameless from an SNP MP. The gap between rich and poor has hugely increased this year compared to last and that has happened because the SNP/Green government decided they wanted that to happen. They've sacrificed thousands of kids to get 'back to normal'. https://t.co/pKK34LQQtS
— James McEnaney (@MrMcEnaney) August 9, 2022
Even if they were determined to use exams this year, there was nothing to stop them setting pass marks and grade boundaries in a way that meant the divides didn’t increase they way they have.
But that would have meant admitting that this is how the system always works and that the attainment gap in Scotland is always, in no small part, a choice.
Young people from the most deprived communities cannot simply be permitted to exceed the limited expectations of those in charge.
And if the system needs to be manipulated specifically to keep them in their place, so be it.
I’m not sure how any of the people running the SQA, the SNP and the Scottish Greens can look themselves in the mirror after this.
And I very much doubt they could look affected students in the eye and tell them that what they have done is fair.
James McEnaney is a former English teacher, lecturer, journalist and the author of ‘Class Rules: the Truth about Scottish Schools’.
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