School pupils get exam justice – Angus Robertson

After an extraordinary year, all four countries in the UK have now agreed to use teachers’ assessments of students’ performance, writes Angus Robertson.

Pupils protest outside the Department for Education in London in response to the downgrading of A-level results before the UK Government's U-turn on the decision (Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)

Scotland was the first to address the school exam crisis followed by Northern Ireland, Wales and finally England..

Teacher-assessed grades are now judged by all four administrations as the fairest way to reward the hard work of school pupils across the UK.

In England, Boris Johnson had been holding out to keep the controversial moderated results, which negatively impacted on many lower income students in more deprived areas.

However, with GCSE results scheduled to be published later this week, it was untenable for the UK Tory government to go ahead with the same controversial algorithm used for A-levels, reducing hundreds of thousands of exam grades.

English Tory MPs have in recent days been piling pressure on hapless English Education Secretary Gavin Williamson to follow the Scottish lead, although Scottish Tory MPs were strangely silent, even though there are thousands of Scottish students who take A-levels and GCSEs.

All governments in the UK of all political persuasions originally thought that the moderated results were the best option, but that has proven to be incorrect and unfair.

Students who have worked so hard in the most difficult of Covid circumstances deserve support and maximum fairness.

This has been an extraordinary year for all students who were unable to sit their exams and justice is finally done by having their teacher-assessed grades restored.

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