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All exams in Scotland have been canceled due to the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on students, Education Secretary John Swinney announced.
Swinney told the Scottish Parliament today that the Higher and Advanced Higher exams will be canceled for the second year in a row after an earlier decision to discard the tests at National 5.
He explained that “the level of disruption for students has not been the same,” and that students from poorer backgrounds are more likely to miss school to isolate themselves.
Swinney said: “I will not stake the future of our upper-level students, whether they get a place in college, training or work, in a lottery of whether their school was hit by Covid.
“The tests cannot explain differential learning loss and could lead to unfair results for our poorest students.
“This could lead to the students’ futures being ruined through no fault of their own. That just isn’t fair.”
He added: “While we expect public health to improve in the coming months, we cannot guarantee that there will be no further disruptions to student learning.
“In light of this, the question is less whether we can test safely in the spring and more whether we can do it fairly.
“However, there is no way around the fact that a significant percentage of our poorest students have lost much more teaching time than other students.
“Changing exams for everyone does not, and cannot, solve that. Instead, we need a model that is more flexible for the specific circumstances of each student.”
Swinney previously announced that the National 5 exam program, which was to take place in the spring of 2021, would be canceled as a result of Covid-19, and the scores would be decided by “the teacher’s judgment backed by the assessment.”
No algorithm will be used to adjust the results after the backlash in this year’s moderation process that disproportionately degraded students from poorer backgrounds, Swinney said.
He added, “We will embrace the new model that has been developed and base the awards on teachers’ judgment of evidence of learning achievement.
“This is safe. It’s fair. And it better recognizes the reality of the disruption that so many students have already had in their learning.”
The decision follows a similar move by the Welsh government to cancel its 2021 exam program in November.
The UK government has confirmed that the exams in England will take place in May.
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