30 weeks doing exams! Scottish pupils take too many tests when they should be learning instead

It wasn’t just Scotland’s young people and their families who had to wait anxiously in anticipation of those all-important exam results this week. We teachers may have been enjoying our hard-earned summer holidays, but those feelings of anxiety around the start of August will be familiar to many of us.

Did that particular pupil get the grade they needed for their place to study at university? Has the kid who faced a really difficult family situation this year pulled through, or ended up being disappointed with their grade? Did I cover everything for the exam with that particular class?

Receiving National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher results feels like such a normal part of the school year and will have been a rite of passage for generations of people across Scotland. Sitting exams and waiting for the results is hardly fun, but they’re just a typical part of every education system, right?

Well, having spent six weeks this year observing lessons in schools in Canada, Switzerland and Germany, I can safely say that not one of these countries has an exam system remotely similar to what we have in Scotland. In fact, when I described the Scottish exam system to the teachers and pupils I met, most were pretty shocked by what they heard. I remember telling one pupil in Switzerland about the number of exams my pupils are required to take. Her response? “Gosh, I’m glad I’m not at school in Scotland!”

Time lost to exams

Let’s remind ourselves of what young people in Scottish schools are subjected to each year. Pupils who continue to Advanced Higher qualifications will potentially sit external exams for three consecutive years out of the six years they’ll spend in secondary education (in S4 to S6). Add to that the prelims, which often start as early as November, and the amount of teaching and learning time lost to study leave and exams is immense. If we add together all those weeks of lost teaching time, it’s possible that a pupil in Scotland will spend 30 weeks out of school, due to exams. That’s nearly an entire academic year devoted to exams and study leave.

The 9 best pictures from exam results day as pupils react with joy across Scotland

Currently, the exam system is so dominant that we end up with the “two-term dash”, where teachers are effectively forced to teach an entire year’s content before Easter, in time for the start of the exam season. The exam system also has a big impact on what and how we teach our pupils, inevitably narrowing the curriculum and making formulaic exam practice the norm, as opposed to breadth and depth of learning. 

But aren’t exams necessary to maintain standards and rigour within an education system? Well, yes and no. Most education systems have some form of exam, and I would argue that they do serve an important function. Exams are probably the fairest way for pupils to show what they can do, especially if they’re going on to further or higher education.

Exams also allow governments to compare attainment between schools by providing them with reliable data. Perhaps the question isn’t whether we should have exams or not, but rather the frequency of exams and the impact this has on young people’s education.

Teachers mark students’ work

In British Columbia, where I spent two weeks observing in a secondary school, provincial exams were abolished a number of years ago, although some schools offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma programme if pupils wish to take it. Pupils are still required to sit regular assessments in school that are set and marked by the teacher. Ultimately it is the teacher and the school that award grades and uphold standards, rather than an external body such as the Scottish Qualifications Authority. 

In Switzerland, I visited an international school that also offers the IB diploma programme. This highly regarded qualification requires young people to take a broad range of subjects including English, maths, sciences and a foreign language.

Crucially, they don’t sit exams until their final year of school, and their grade is also based on coursework. When I chatted about this system with a member of the school’s senior leadership team, he said one of the best things the school ever did was to get rid of exams at 16 (previously the school had done GCSEs at this stage). The result was that teachers and students have time to cover more material in more depth, rather than cramming for yet another round of exams.

Deep learning

Teachers in Scotland spend a huge amount of time and energy on SQA administration. Reducing the number and frequency of exams would free up valuable time for teachers to develop engaging lessons that enable deep learning and allow them to provide more in-depth feedback to their pupils. 

There has been a lot of discussion in Scotland regarding the assessment system, especially since the publication of the 2023 Hayward Review, yet we’re still waiting to hear exactly how the Scottish Government plans to reform the system. These reforms are more urgent than ever. 

As pupils across Scotland contemplate their exam results, I can only hope they’ll remember that there is more to education than exams. If those with the power are brave enough to make substantial changes, perhaps more of our young people will have the opportunity to discover that learning can be an enjoyable experience, rather than an endless cycle of exam misery. We teachers might even have fewer sleepless nights too… 

Jonathan McBride is a modern languages teacher in a secondary school in Edinburgh. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, enabling him to spent six weeks in May and June researching language teaching methodologies in Canada, Switzerland and Germany