Meeting of the Parliament 19 January 2022
There is daily correspondence and discussion about the data, and if the data signifies that we are required to move to scenario 2, the SQA board can take that decision. It can take that decision at any time when the data suggests that that is required.
Scenario 3, in which exams would be cancelled for public health reasons, would be a decision for me. In the event that that happens, qualifications will be awarded on the basis of the professional judgment of teachers and lecturers, using evidence from the normal in-year assessments that take place during the school year.
As I have repeatedly set out since the beginning of this term, it is our firm intention for exams to take place, but it would be highly irresponsible to ignore the possibility—however exceptionally remote, as we hope it will be—of the pandemic worsening. Therefore, we have a robust contingency should the public health conditions make exams impossible. To answer the point that I think Meghan Gallacher did not know about the other nations, the devolved Administrations have prepared for the same eventuality. Indeed, on 11 November 2021, the Department for Education and the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation—Ofqual—
“confirmed contingency plans to support students in the unlikely event that exams in England cannot go ahead”.
We are planning for contingencies across the United Kingdom.
When that approach was announced, in August 2021, Larry Flanagan from the Educational Institute of Scotland said:
“It is essential that appropriate and robust contingencies are in place”.
Let us be clear—and this is a point that Ross Greer correctly made in his intervention: the Tories are proposing that, even if there is a future new variant or a turn of events in the pandemic that leads public health experts to advise against public gatherings, the Scottish Conservatives would bring children and teachers into school regardless of the consequences of that action.