Wait over for pupils in West Lothian as exam results are received and continue to improve
The anxious wait for high school pupils in West Lothian was over as they received their exam results on Tuesday.
Pupils have had the opportunity to undertake a wide range of courses either in their own schools or in conjunction with partners through the West Lothian Campus and at West Lothian College.
Young people across the local authority area were rewarded for their hard work as Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) National Qualifications and Awards results were received on August 5.
Early indications show that the results from senior pupils attending West Lothian's 11 secondary schools have continued to improve across a number of key indicators on the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF).
Pupils in S5 achieving one or more Level 6 qualification, which includes Highers, increased across West Lothian.
Both the number of S5 and S6 pupils achieving five or more Level 6 qualifications, such as Highers, also saw rises this year.
As well as National Qualifications, pupils have achieved National Progression Awards, HNCs, Skills for Work courses and Foundation Apprenticeships among others.
Executive councillor for education, Andrew McGuire said: 'Well done to all of our young people who have received their exam results. Their hard work and commitment to their learning has led to these achievements.
'West Lothian has shown continual improvement in our exam results which is testament to the support that our pupils receive from our schools.
'I would like to thank all education staff for their great work in supporting our young people this year.'
West Lothian Council Head of Secondary Education Siobhan McGarty added: 'Once our young people have their results, they may need some advice and support about their next steps with their curriculum and career pathways. Support is available to them through their schools and through organisations such as Skills Development Scotland/ Careers Advisors who are all available to help.'
For anyone seeking support and guidance after receiving their results:
Talk to your school: School staff will be available after the exam results are released to offer advice and help, particularly for pupils who intend to continue in school education.
Skills Development Scotland: For careers advice contact the special free helpline on 0808 100 8000, which is open 9am to 5pm weekdays. You can also visit: My World of Work
SQA: For information regarding appeals and more, visit: SQA Website
West Lothian College: For information about courses visit: West Lothian College website, contact the admissions Office: 01506 427605 or email: enquiries@west-lothian.ac.uk
Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS): If you are undecided about your future there is a wealth of advice and information and options available on UCAS website
Listen & Link: We all respond differently to important life events, like waiting for and receiving results. At times we may feel relaxed and calm, whilst at others we may feel worried. If you are feeling worried or have not had the results you hoped for please know you can reach out to Listen & Link and speak to one of the team on 01506 283160
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Scotsman
23 minutes ago
- Scotsman
Exams Scotland: Does surge in vocational subjects mark an end to Highers as the 'gold standard' of education?
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It has long been repeated the Scottish Government's 'gold standard' of educational achievement was securing five Highers. This year's Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) results were hailed as a 'landmark' year for Scotland's schools - but not for the number of pupils attaining this so-called gold standard. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Pupils pose after receiving exam results at Kings Park Secondary School in Glasgow. Picture: Jeff| Getty Images Instead, success in vocational subjects - such as National Progression Awards (NPA) - was one of the stand-out stories of results day. For the first time, more than 100,000 vocational awards were handed out to Scotland's school pupils, with one council area reporting an 'upsurge' in pupils opting for vocational courses. While this is being hailed as a success by education bosses, others raise concerns about the risk of a 'two-tier' system where less academically able pupils are pushed away from Highers and into practical courses. In Edinburgh, 70 NPA courses are offered across 23 secondary schools - and the council is emphatic these have parity of esteem with more traditional academic qualifications. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad City of Edinburgh's education convener James Dalgleish said pupils were increasingly looking towards what jobs they might do and the best way to get into the world of work. In 2023, the Scottish capital's schools had 941 NPA passes and this year that's up to 1700. 'It's also about supporting young people in their passion and not fitting them into boxes or pushing them down a certain path,' Mr Dalgleish said. Construction and stone masonry are of particular interest in Edinburgh, a city rapidly expanding and where building skills are going to be vital. Mr Dalgleish added: 'We're going to need a lot of new young people coming out of school moving into the construction sector. Otherwise, we're not going to get the homes that we want to build. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'We live in a really beautiful, old, historic city. We were struggling to get talented, well-qualified young people to be able to maintain these beautiful buildings that people from across the world want to see.' A view of Victorian tenement housing in the West End of Edinburgh, Morningside. Picture: Getty Images Some young people look ahead to a barista qualification to help them gain a job working while they study at university. One example given is a pupil who wanted to take a construction course to give him practical experience of working a lathe before going to study engineering at university. Some schools have facilities for vocational courses while for others, pupils will travel to Edinburgh College. As part of the city's net zero ambitions, it wants to cut the number of young people commuting and so two new schools being built will have space to work with industry partners on training. The experiences on offer are described as 'life changing', but the council is keen to emphasise there is no 'two-tier system'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad While there are schemes, such as a roofing course offered by Castlebrae Secondary, to encourage disengaged young people back to school, the council is emphatically against any suggestion vocational courses are for pupils who aren't coping at school. The words 'dignity' and 'parity of esteem' are frequently used. Mr Dalgleish said: 'These qualifications are not nice to have - they are essential to have. They are a fundamental part of what we offer our young people and we have had a resulting dramatic increase in those choosing to take them.' In Glasgow, the council introduced vocational subjects 22 years ago. Nicola McKenzie is the EVIP development officer for the council. She joined EVIP, which stands for Enhanced Vocational Inclusion Programme, on a six-month secondment. That was 19 years ago and Mrs McKenzie is still passionate about her role. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'You're like a teacher, you're like a social worker, you're like an auntie - it's wonderful chaos every day of my life,' she said. 'Their stories can be really traumatic and when I started, I literally cried for about a month because I grew up in the east end of Glasgow and I thought I was gallus. 'I've unfortunately had young people that I work with who are no longer with us. But I've also worked with young people who are now [undergone a] 360 [degree] transformation and they're working in our children's house estate or they've went to university or they work for global hairdressing organisations. And their lives have changed.' At that time, the vocational options were construction or hospitality, prompted by skills shortages in those sectors. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mrs McKenzie said: 'Also there was a recognition that the 'chalk and talk' style of learning didn't suit the changes in society.' The city offers a wide range of senior phase programmes with three regional Glasgow colleges with courses from psychology to hairdressing to computer game development and barista skills. Young people stay at school, but have the chance to try college simultaneously for some courses. It is, Mrs McKenzie said, a 'real cross-section' of pupils who opt for vocational courses - some with an eye on the future world of work and some who struggle with traditional learning. There is a definite culture shift in how theses courses are viewed. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'I've been in education for 25 years now and that's the first time they've had a non-academic young person celebrated on results day,' Mrs McKenzie said. 'And that was really remarkable for me.' The young person in question is also remarkable. Jason Singh was invited to King's Park High School in Glasgow on results day on Tuesday, alongside the Higher results success stories to meet Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth. The 16-year-old has been studying at Glasgow Clyde for SQA awards at National 4 level in automotive skills, as well as linking back in with the school to attain English and maths. He had support from an MCR Pathways mentor, Peter, who helped him to 'speak about things that I would never have spoken about - my feelings, my emotions, how to deal with my anger', Jason said. He felt college was a better place for him because they were treated as young adults. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'In school if you're having a bad day you get kept in as a punishment,' he said. 'College doesn't cage you up like animals. It's ten times better than school.' Jason is going to study painting and decorating after the summer holidays and has big ambitions. He wants to own his own business or, better yet, two. 'I've got more to learn,' he added. 'I'm happy I've got here in the end, but I'm moving on to do bigger and better things, earn money then retire and do what I want.' EVIP, which is unique to Glasgow and was originally led by social work, is designed for pupils who are not coping with mainstream education. It started as a scheme for young people in children's houses whose attainment was lower than the city average. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Now it's a project for children with multiple risk factors who, say, may be young carers or have been sexually exploited. Mrs McKenzie's young people are better suited to college where there are no ringing bells every 50 minutes, there are no multiple transitions in a day and a wide variety of changing faces to deal with. The teenager's EVIP worker will phone them to get them up for school or college in the morning and give them constant support. For some young people, they are the only person in their household getting up and keeping to a routine. Their EVIP worker may be the one good adult in their life. Mrs McKenzie said: 'From the backgrounds our young people come from, Highers are not achievable at this time in their life. 'It may be achievable at a later stage, but we are about supporting young people to achieve and celebrating those achievements.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Mrs McKenzie was quick to push against any notion of a two-tier system. She said: 'It is not the case that it's 'oh, you're a bad boy so you'll go and do construction' or 'you're a girl who's not coping well so you can do hairdressing'.' The pandemic has also had an impact in terms of preventing young people from having experience of natural transitions through school. Literacy and numeracy levels have suffered and more teenagers need support. 'But that learning doesn't need to be in a classroom setting,' Mrs McKenzie said. 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The Herald Scotland
4 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Why are pupils from these 18 towns being left behind?
On top of that, the attainment gap – the difference in outcomes for those from the most and least deprived areas – narrowed in both National 5 and Advanced Higher, while staying basically the same for Higher. In terms of pass rates and attainment gaps, both sets of stats had been going the wrong way for years, and there was a sense that another year of decline would spark a major reaction – which is probably why the release of this year's results was met more with feeling of relief than celebration. Read more: It is absolutely true that young people have done better in their exams than has been the case for the last few years – but if you dive deeper into the data, you find that there's one group for whom that isn't the case. They are the pupils who live in Scotland's 'remote small towns'. Under the government's urban-rural geographical classification scheme, these places are home to between 4000 and 10000 people, and are also more than half an hour's drive away from larger towns and cities. There are just 18 of them in Scotland spread across seven councils, all of which are outside of the central belt. Urban-Rural Classification Large Urban areas are settlements of 125,000 or more people (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Greater Glasgow, Motherwell and Wishaw) Other Urban areas have a population between 10,000 and 124,999 (including Ayr, Dunfermline, Inverness, St Andrews, Stirling and Troon) Accessible Small Towns have a population between 3,000 and 9,999 and less than a 30-minute drive of an urban area (including Auchinleck, Dunblane, Gretna, North Berwick, Shotts and Strathaven) Remote Small Towns have a population between 3,000 and 9,999 and are more than a 30-minute drive to the nearest urban area (including Campbeltown, Girvan, Kirkcudbright, Lerwick, Newton Stewart, Oban, Thurso and Wick) Accessible Rural areas have a population below 3,000 and less than a 30-minute drive to an urban area (including Beauly, Dalmellington, Lochwinnoch, North Queensferry, Portpatrick and Torrance) Remote Rural areas have a population below 3,000 and more than a 30-minute drive time to the nearest urban area (including Aberfoyle, Gairloch, Kinlochleven, Newtonmore, Pitlochry and Ullapool) Most Remote Small Towns are in Argyll and Bute, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, with a few found towards the south of the country as well. Places like Shetland, Orkney and Na h-Eileanan Siar have a high percentage of their population living in these locations, but that is obviously because Lerwick, Kirkwall and Stornoway are the major population centres on those archipelagos. Nationwide, remote small towns account for 0.3 percent of the Scottish population and 0.09 percent of the land. The SQA publishes annual exam data broken down by the urban-rural categorisations, so we know that out of the six area types, only Remote Small Towns registered a decrease in the Higher pass rate this year. As a result, this figure now stands at just 66.8 percent, far lower than other location types, and also lower than the 68.9 percent pass rate recorded in 2019. The gap between these pupils and those from other areas has also widened. In 2019, the difference in Higher pass rates between Remote Small Towns and Other Urban Areas (the next lowest performing category) was 3.1 percentage points – that number has now more than doubled and stands at 7.4 percentage points. The gap between Remote Small Towns and Accessible Rural areas is 11.6 percentage points. These areas were also the only ones to see a fall in the Advanced Higher pass rate, and although an increase has been recorded at National 5, a success rate of 72 percent is still well short of all other geographical categories. Pupils from Remote Small Towns simply do not do as well in their exams. And this isn't an aberration. In recent years the number of school leavers from these areas going on to higher education has fallen sharply: it currently stands at just under 25 percent, which is significantly lower than all other areas. The result is that leavers from Remote Small Towns are now by far the least likely of all young people to enter higher education. If we look at official data on literacy and numeracy, known as Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL), we find that the lowest figure in every single one of the 30 available metrics was for Remote Small Towns. According to a wellbeing survey from 2021/22, young people from Remote Small Towns were most likely to say that they wished they had a different kind of life. This isn't the first time that The Herald has asked questions about the treatment of pupils from Remote Small Towns, and the issues have been highlighted since at least 2020. What's more, the data sources used to identify the problem all come from the Scottish Government. All of which is to say that ministers cannot claim to have been unaware that this group of young people are facing serious and consequential disadvantages, or that answers – and action – are needed. Scotland's Remote Small Towns Alness, Banff, Campbeltown; Dunoon, Innellan and Sandbank; Girvan; Invergordon; Kirkcudbright; Kirkwall; Lerwick; Macduff; Newton Stewart; Oban; Rothesay; Steòrnabhagh (Stornoway); Stranraer; Tain; Thurso; Wick So, what have they done? Has a programme of research been carried out, or at least commissioned, to explain these persistently poorer outcomes for pupils from Remote Small Towns? Have additional resources and support been directed towards schools serving these young people? Surely, at the very least, a good set of press lines has been prepared? The Herald on Sunday approached the government earlier this week and explained the story we intended to publish. We provided a direct link to the relevant SQA documentation, which anyone can freely access online, as well as this table showing the clear geographical attainment gap in Higher pass rates: We also pointed out that this outcome is repeated in areas such as the ACEL literacy and numeracy data, which is available on the Scottish Government website. Ultimately, we asked two questions. Does the government actually have any idea what is going on, and why education data from remote small towns is poorer than other areas? Is the government actively doing anything specific about the problem? And here's what a spokesperson gave us as a response: 'The Scottish Government recognises the variations in attainment across different local authority areas and we are engaging with councils to ensure that they are making progress towards their local stretch aims, which will support a reduction in these variations. 'As part of this work, local authorities will be reviewing their individual outcomes and working with their schools to understand the issues to determine what they collectively need to do to drive improvement locally.' It seems like a lot of words when a few, or one, might have sufficed.
The Herald Scotland
5 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Exam results day is unmatched in America – is that good?
Usually in those times, I have lived here long enough to have a sense of the context involved, and I can wrap my head around what I am covering. Every year, however, I have a day at work where my American brain cannot help but think: 'Why, though?' Unfortunately, it happens to also be arguably the most important single day in Scottish education reporting: SQA results day. My ambivalence about results day has grown over the years. Five years ago, on my first results day, I visited Lossiemouth High School to speak with students who had aced their exams and were on their way to top universities across the UK. It was a great day. My favourite part of this job is speaking to students and teachers. At the time, the pandemic was disrupting daily life, and we were all happy to celebrate. I never hesitate to celebrate student achievement, but over the years, results day has raised new questions as I started to think more about the young people who we do not see in the headlines. I wonder whether the spotlight we shine on success doesn't increase the disappointment of the many students who don't receive their desired result, especially on a day that is already so charged with anxiety and emotion that students might feel like they may as well be back in the exam hall. Of course, I understand that the results matter. The Scottish Government, particularly in the past decade, has made it virtually impossible for anyone wanting to heap praise or criticism to look away from attainment statistics. Beyond politics, unless some of the loftier goals that have been kicked around recently come to fruition– for example, by ending Scotland's reliance on high-stakes exams, creating new pathways to university and careers, or better recognising young people's work over the course of their careers – the fact remains that exam results open and close doors for young people. As I've continued to report on proposed changes to student evaluation, some transatlantic comparisons have come into focus. Read more In the United States, there is no results day. There is no single day when clicks on the 'Education' tab of every major outlet's website skyrocket, fuelled in no small part by readers who will not be seen there again until next August. Still, students, teachers, and communities are judged on student performance. Sometimes that judgment leads to improvements. At other times, it is unfair and masks deeper problems that children are facing. The major difference is that there is no one test—no single key that unlocks access to university. Instead, there are many. At first blush, this may sound like an improvement over the highly charged exam system in Scotland. Here, countless teachers and other education experts have argued that the threshold of three or more Highers as the key to university is outdated, but the vision of a world where those results are not so decisive is not yet a reality. In the US, the key to higher education is spread much more thinly, and the doors to university are opened by a healthy diet of alphabet soup. For years, the gold standard for students leaving high school was a score of 1400 (out of 1600) on the SAT, along with enough passes in Advanced Placement (AP) courses to boost their Grade Point Average (GPA) and earn university course credit. The SAT is a standardised test administered by the College Board, an American non-profit organisation. It covers reading, writing, and mathematics using the same format every year. For context, although Harvard University no longer requires students to submit an SAT score, 1530 is the recommendation for an applicant to be competitive. Alternatively, some students opt to sit the ACT, a similar test but with more focus on science and mathematics. Depending on where and when a student went through the US education system, they may have been encouraged to sit both, one over the other or, as happens far too frequently, told not to bother with either. Read more: The last point is an important one and speaks to another major difference in the two systems I am familiar with. As challenging as closing the attainment gap has proven in Scotland, it is at least relatively well-known. In the US, the gap is much wider than it appears on paper, because many students who are struggling the most do not even make it into the statistics. The senior phase of secondary school genuinely has no comparison. When I first explained it to him, a friend who has taught for years in the US suggested it sounded like 'bonus high school' for top students. The early exit is much more fraught in the US, meaning many students who might not carry on to the senior phase in Scotland find themselves still struggling through higher-level courses without the foundation they need to succeed. Often, these students are from poorer and minority backgrounds. If they are encouraged to sit the SAT, ACT or something similar, they are usually still at a disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, who have better access to the multibillion-dollar test prep industry. In the context of the attainment gap, they are the demographics that Scottish education policy is trying to lift up. In the US, instead, they are often pressured through the grade levels until they finally reach the end, sometimes with very little concrete qualifications to show for it. This context has given me an unusual view of standardisation. The SQA will be replaced by a new body called Qualifications Scotland in December, and with that comes the potential for changes. As the reaper's scythe swings lower, the SQA has come under renewed criticism for having a near-monopoly on qualifications in the country, particularly in the senior phase. There is not the same level of government or single-organisation involvement in America. Instead, major companies administer the tests and dozens of international corporations and local businesses profit from test prep materials and courses. Nothing like the singular focus on one type of test on one day exists in America. Instead, results days play out in miniature at different times across the country all year long. And even though students unlock the next steps in their careers in different ways, each of these paths opens a new opportunity to be exploited. Whether I will ever fully accept the hysteria of results day is a question for another year. What I can say for sure is that, when it comes to exams, the grass is best described as yellow on both sides of the ocean.
