Why we should keep exams cancelled long after the pandemic is over

Carmen Thomson was teaching Home Economics by making her less-than-enthusiastic daughter wash the dishes. Her daughter was “learning” colours by sorting the laundry into different loads. Maths was a lesson in working out the difference between the deals on milk cartons at the local shop.

As far as I’m concerned, she passed all of her classes with flying colours – and there wasn’t a written exam in sight.

We’ve all witnessed the disposal of all sorts of norms since March last year – teaching round the dining table has ­replaced the classroom, working from home at the other end of the dining table is par for the course and, as of this week, drinking alcohol outside is now against the law throughout Scotland. Unprecedented times, indeed.

It has got me thinking about the future – a dangerous game in a pandemic, I concede, but one that I think deserves some playing. As the old ways evaporate, there must be a point at which our longing for them to return also gets replaced with an enthusiasm for a new, better way to live.

We’ve all been searching for meaning and purpose in this crisis – and sometimes that just involves getting to the end of a day, or a week. But what if we engage our long-term vision, and use the ­pandemic to set some new precedents in our methods and our way of life?

Mercifully, stodgy, tedious, useless exams have been a casualty of the pandemic.

Early in the New Year, the Westminster government took the challenging, the unprecedented, the unique decision, again, to follow Holyrood’s lead, from December 2020, and cancel exams for English students in 2021. It’s worth noting that the Welsh government were also trend-setting in this area. Highers, National 5s, A Levels and GCSEs have bitten the dust. Good. Let this be the new normal and let’s leave them all cancelled forever.

“Another year wasted” was the ­reaction of students speaking to The ­Guardian. And I understand that ­sentiment. ­Because our lives in school and in ­university are ­driven by exams, and so now there’s ­nothing left to achieve for the covid-­generation. That’s all. It’s about passing exams. How dull is that? Imagine having exams as the purpose for going to school? Boring.

I’m fortunate that I could pass exams (Confession: I sat, and passed, advanced higher English and I hadn’t read the Jane Austen books I wrote about. Sorry Miss Lauder). But I hate them. To this day, I hate them. I remember feeling stressed, anxious, on edge – have I memorised the right quotes, can I regurgitate how a pyramidal peak is formed, will I be able to construct this essay in the box-ticking manner that will appease the Scottish Qualifications Authority marker?

Could I pass an exam now? Absolutely not. I remember the occasional Othello quotation, and can probably throw a ­smattering of political theory at you from my days at university. The rest has been consigned to the dustbin of history, with all my other bookish theoric. I threw ­physics to the dogs and I’ll now have none of it, as a Scottish king almost said.

We’re assessing our ability to recall ­information. And when was the last time you had a real life conversation where someone couldn’t immediately Google any dubious info, and get it instantly from a range of reliable sources? Maybe we should teach our pupils how to avoid fake news instead of how to recall a date that is nanoseconds away on our phones.

This pandemic could be the modern revolution within which we have all tricked ourselves into believing we exist already. Surely there’s more to life than doom-scrolling and forgetting what we just watched on Netflix. This is the time for visionaries to reach for the stars. Time to burn exams to the ground and let students actually demonstrate how brilliantly wonderful they are, by letting them learn and grow all year long, experiencing workplaces, pursuing their sporting goals, inventing and creating. Time to free them from the constraints of how many marks they get for remembering how to calculate the length of a side of a triangle. Gosh, I actually just felt a bit nauseous at the thought.

This is the time that corporations and companies can free themselves from city-centric office blocks and let their staff enhance their quality of life in the ­countryside. We’ve all learned how to unmute the Zoom call by now, imagine unmuting it from a garden . This is the time for churches to keep reaching people who, research shows, are longing for more and seeking out religion in this pandemic. They’re watching the livestream services, so good – let them engage!

I get that the exam technique helps us read and write critically, I do, and I am nothing if not critical. But teachers teach us. They’re not going anywhere. Why must it all come down to two nightmare-inducing hours in the harshly lit, sweat-infused gym hall on a “phew what a scorcher” summer day? This is one of the opportunities that can be grasped out of the jaws of the pandemic disaster.

Of course we will learn new ways of determining who should get into a university degree course (incidentally, since I started working, not one employer has asked me what I got in my degree. They asked what I studied. They’ve never cared about the grade. A 2:1 in politics, for the record.)

SPEAKING of which, let’s address some of the Education Secretary’s concerns about homeschooling that have led to the cancellation: disruption to the education system – why isn’t education a bit more flexible? Why is our system so easy to disrupt? Struggles to access online resources are another, legitimate, concern. But it’s 2021. Are you really telling me we can’t provide ultra-fast broadband and decent computers to families that need them most? That’s not a very credible case, for a strong, bold, world-leading Scotland, is it?

Not for the first time in this pandemic, teachers are back on the front line. They’ve had to help guide, motivate and encourage pupils who have had their goalposts moved and feel deflated by their lack of “qualifications”.

Let me tell you, fifth years – the text message from SQA doesn’t qualify you. Your ability does – and it will blossom without exams. Teachers - I don’t know exactly how you feel about ditching exams for good. But I feel like teachers are special. I feel like we’re limiting you. I feel that by giving you a tick-box guide to what’s required to pass an exam, your creative abilities to help children actually learn and flourish and be spectacular is being contained. Imagine the freedom.

I wondered what will happen for pupils this summer. And I read that, in the absence of exams, the Scottish Qualifications Authority will work to “understand the standards required for qualifications” before applying it to “specified pieces of evidence such as coursework”. I think this is fancy talk for: “we’re going to accommodate your brilliant abilities outside an exam hall this year, and look at how consistently brilliant you’ve been throughout your school year, because that’s what matters when it comes to assessing your brilliance. PS we’re not using that stupid algorithm again…” – but then I never was very good at close reading (sorry again, Miss Lauder).

Schools remain closed for at least the next couple of weeks under lockdown restrictions across Scotland. Parents and teachers alike are being called up to fulfill new roles and new responsibilities. Why don’t we support them, by envisioning a future that liberates us all from the constraints of things like exams?

Not long ago, I arrived back at my flat and, as I was hanging up my jacket, I had this overwhelming sense of relief – I had no homework to do. I cannot place what prompted that thought. I can say it was euphoric. Is it still the case in 2021 that pupils have to follow my example, and spend 21 years “earning” that feeling by working towards exams?

THE National Library of Scotland tells us that the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 “lays the basis for the modern education system” and that Highers were introduced in 1888. Swinney, Sturgeon - it’s 2021. I think the education system is creaking. Let’s build a new foundation. Let’s take the time when we’re all at home, protecting the NHS and saving lives, to think about what it is we actually want for our school children and teachers. I think it’s to be free of the constraints of horrid exams - to liberate the creativity and brilliance of pupils and teachers alike and build an education system for the post-covid generation.

By the way, did you like my use of historical dates? Well, I researched them to write this piece - and the only exam that little bit of instant research has to pass is whether or not this article is published.