What do this year's exam results mean for the future of the Scottish education system?

ITV News

a day ago

Around the time that Scottish school pupils were sitting their preliminary exams in February, people in the SNP were whispering in my ear that the Education Secretary, Jenny Gilruth, was vulnerable to being moved from her post in a Scottish Government reshuffle.
Today, alongside many young people north of the border, the education secretary will be relieved at this year's exam results.
She will see them both as a vindication of how she is doing her job – and the fact that she kept it.
Overall attainment is up, with 30.8 per cent of pupils who sat a Higher exam receiving an A grade and 75.9 per cent passing their tests.
That is a slight increase on last year and – in the case of top grades – a decent bump on the 2019 results, which were the last set of exams sat before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The awards handed out during the various lockdowns were higher than usual as pupils had high-stakes exams removed.
In 2020, they were based on heavily moderated teacher estimates before a series of smaller assessments were then used to determine grades the following year.
These latest set of results were a key test after a series of controversies last year: from falling pass rates, to blank emails being sent to thousands of pupils instead of exam results, to controversy over how some exams were marked.
Chaos, in other words. It had to go smoothly this year and, so far, it has for Gilruth.
So, that's the good news. The downside is that the SNP is still being judged on a pledge made a decade ago by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
'My aim - to put it bluntly - is to close the attainment gap completely,' she said in a 2015 speech. 'It will not be done overnight - I accept that. But it must be done.'
The following year, the Scottish Government's programme for government said ministers were aiming to 'substantially eliminate the gap over the course of the next decade'.
Well, we're 12 months out from that deadline, and while the gap has narrowed a little year on year, it is largely stuck at the same level as it was pre-pandemic.
Indeed, it has widened for advanced highers.
Gilruth, a former modern studies teacher, who was appointed to her cabinet post in 2023, believes that the key to progress is by focusing on what goes on in classrooms and listening to those leading them.
Her family and friends still work in the profession, meaning she is left in no doubt about concerns from those on the frontline.
She is determined to work with teachers and that has informed her approach to the new body, Qualifications Scotland, which will run next year's exams.
Donna Stewart, Scotland's chief examining officer, is a former deputy headteacher, and others are being moved straight from classrooms into senior positions.
Teachers at the sharp end say this is filtering down to them with a 'very positive' Curriculum Improvement Cycle, which was set up in 2021 to help develop how subjects are taught, listening to those in classrooms and being unafraid to criticise the outgoing Scottish Qualifications Authority.
The SQA is being scrapped – and replaced by Qualifications Scotland – because of a series of exam controversies.
The biggest of these was the decision to use an algorithm to use schools' past performances to change some pupils' grades when exams were first scrapped during the 2020 lockdown.
After public protests from pupils and teachers – and a vote of no confidence being tabled in the education secretary of the day – 124,000 exam results were reinstated.
So who was that education secretary, who survived that vote on his future only after U-turning on the original policy?
It was the current First Minister, John Swinney. If these exam results are signs that a mess is being cleared up, his successor could argue that much of the untidiness is of her boss's making.