Dear oh dear. Scotland’s secondary school results are in – and it’s not looking good for John Swinney’s SNP government. As vast numbers of nervous students are anxiously awaiting exam outcomes that could decide whether they get a university place, it transpires that hundreds of school pupils have instead received ‘blank’ emails this morning. Not like the Nats to underperform, eh?
Just under 150,000 pupils in Scotland are due to receive the results of their national exams today and students had the option to receive these over text, by email and by post. But many of those who signed up for email results – which were expected to come in at 8am this morning – received an, er, blank template rather than their final grades. Scotland’s exam board has said it is working to ‘urgently resolve an issue’ and added that exam results will also be delivered by post, but frustrated parents have taken to social media to blast the soon-to-be-replaced Scottish Qualifications Authority – and the government – for the mess. One posted: ‘As if the SQA needed to convince us that it wasn’t fit for purpose. They managed to send out empty draft emails to a whole cohort of students waiting for results.’ Another fumed: ‘Thanks a lot Scot Gov, it is stressful enough without your incompetence’. Quite.
But it’s not the first exam result blunder Swinney has been associated with. Mr S would advise readers to cast their minds back to 2020 when, under the former Education Secretary, pandemic results were based on predicted grades submitted by teachers to the SQA. The Scottish exam board accepted almost 75 per cent of estimates, but downgraded over 120,000 results – and it quickly transpired that students predominantly from poorer areas had fallen victim to the approach. So much for progressiveness…
Swinney then had to stage a rather humiliating U-turn, while Dear Leader Nicola Sturgeon admitted the SNP ‘did not get it right’. You can say that again. If the Nats had to face a competency test, Mr S can only imagine how they might fare…
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