Hugh Reilly - The days of holding support staff hostage may be numbered

Published on Tuesday 13 May 2008 19:55

THE writing is on the wall for those who act as readers and scribes for pupils in need of support when sitting SQA examinations. Communication, Access, Literacy and Learning (CALL) Scotland has helped the SQA to produce digital test papers for 209 pupils across 48 schools.

Using digital papers, students work independently, can type answers, can click on the text and have it read out by the computer. Paul Nisbet, the man who helped develop the technology, believes that there has been an over-reliance on help for candidates.

As understatements go, this is right up with Lawrence Oates declaring it to be a tad chilly as he stepped out of Captain Scott's tent for a morning stroll in a -40C Polar blizzard.

In the 2006 exam diet, an unbelievable 17,000 requests were made for readers and 15,000 calls for scribes.

Part of the blame for the apparent mass outbreak of illiteracy lies with schools caving in to pushy parents who play the dyslexia card to force presenting centres to allocate a reader and a scribe for their children. This is in addition to the extra time given to such candidates.

Don't get me wrong; dyslexia does exist but there is now a mushrooming private-sector industry willing to diagnose a reading disability for the right fee. I find it odd that kids I have taught for three-and-a-half years suddenly cannot function without an adult reading out questions and writing down responses. On the face of it, it is bizarre, but such assistance does raise attainment.

Without exception, every kid under my tutelage who has received such support has overachieved. I am not saying that scribes cheat but, consciously or unconsciously, the adult succeeds in producing a quality of answer that is totally out of kilter with the candidate's previous scores in classroom assessments and homework assignments.

There are several theories for this phenomenon that no-one dares speak its name. Some say that the body language of scribes makes students think twice about their responses, for example an instinctive raising of the eyebrows may act as a cue for the teenager to reconsider his initial utterance that Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. A roll of the eyes might be enough to convince a candidate to contradict his statement that a quadrilateral is someone who has lost all feeling in four limbs.

From conversations with people who have acted as scribes, it is clear that sitting in a room for several hours with an agitated youth inevitably leads to Stockholm Syndrome, that is the scribe begins to strike up a friendship with the SQA hostage. Who among us could be so callous and not give a nod and a wink in the right direction to a youngster we saw struggling to pass an examination?

If digital papers become the norm, it spells the end of the cushy number of jotting down the answers of a kid while next door, earning the same salary, a classroom teacher is being torn apart by an excitable group of 30 S3 Untermenschen. In many schools, all learning support staff are taken off timetabled classes to take down the words of wisdom from the examinees. This means that for the entire period of the exam diet, whatever classroom support Sir enjoyed is taken away, and he is left to teach maximum-size classes containing kids who appear at both extremes of the ability spectrum.

In my opinion, Curriculum for Excellence has a somewhat hollow ring to it when so many learners need someone to read aloud the text or scribble down the candidates' musings. If schools go digital, the three Rs – reading, writing and relying on someone else to do the first two – will be a thing of the past.

The days of the Great Dictators appear to be numbered.