There’s nothing ‘fair’ about the SNP cancelling exams

Whenever the Scottish nationalists start talking about ‘fairness’, you know someone’s getting shafted. SNP education minister John Swinney has cancelled Scotland’s higher exams for 2021. Not out of concern over safely administering the assessments in a socially-distanced manner, but because letting them go ahead at all could be ‘unfair’. Nicola Sturgeon’s deputy told the Edinburgh parliament on Tuesday:

‘Exams cannot account for differential loss of learning and could lead to unfair results for our poorest pupils. This could lead to pupils’ futures being blighted through no fault of their own. That is simply not fair.’

You might remember Swinney from his previous stance on exam fairness. That was back in the summer, when he presided over the downgrading of 125,000 exam results from the 2019/20 academic year. Pupils from the most deprived backgrounds were twice as likely to be marked down from their teachers’ predicted grades than youngsters from well-off areas. After five days of trying to hold the line, the SNP, up for re-election next May and facing a backlash, relented and upgraded