Oliver Mundell — Keeping school exams is the only correct answer

Those serious about turning our education system around should be willing to make the case for retaining the last hallmark of our once world-leading system. 

The Government should be challenging those such as Natasha Radmehr, who argued last week in The Herald that exams have no place in a 21st-century education system. 

READ MORE: School exams to return in 2022 ‘if safe to do so’, SNP confirms

Instead of shifting the goal posts and seeking to water down our curriculum, We should be asking why, despite their best efforts, too many young people leave school under the SNP with fewer qualifications than their peers and why they feel underprepared to grasp future opportunities, without the necessary critical thinking skills they need and want. 

Critical thinking under pressure is not a skill that should be dumped and it certainly is not a relic of a world 100 years ago. And while we are at it, let’s at least remember it is universal education and exams over the past century that have opened doors for millions of people. Education and exams, if done right, have the potential to be the great leveller in our society. 

The supposed “evil of exams” is just the latest in a long line of myths from the so-called progressive voices in the education. But they are wrong. Exams don’t create the attainment gap – they shine a light on it and demand better from a system that, despite the SNP’s bold claims, does not live up to its ambition of delivering on either excellence or equity. 

A bit like the defence of democracy often credited to Churchill, the best argument for them is not the merits of exams themselves but the failure of the alternatives to deliver anything better, or in this case, fairer. 

I know from my own time at Moffat Academy, a rural state school – albeit in a relatively affluent small town – that those who benefit most from coursework and continuous assessment are the kids like me, who get a lot of help at home. 

I also know that making it easier for everyone to get good grades, rather than accessing potential and ability to think and apply knowledge and understanding, doesn’t help those who rely most our education system to open doors for them. It just makes it harder for them to complete as it moves the goalposts. Suddenly, no longer is it good enough to do well academically, which can be difficult enough. No.

Now you’ve got to be a well-rounded person with interesting hobbies and be able to demonstrate you have the kind of parental connections to secure you the right work-experience placement. Surely we need to take a step back and recognise testing people on how well they have understood what they have been taught alongside everyone else in the classroom is actually much fairer? 

It is time politicians and commentators took a look outside the bubble, because the truth is that most people out there in the real world recognise why we need them. 

Fairness is not about lowering expectations. It’s about giving everyone a fair opportunity to succeed. Rather than opting for radical reform, let’s get serious about embracing the tried-and-tested methods we know can work. Let’s be more honest and admit it’s not the exams that are failing. Instead, our system is not preparing everyone well for exams or the world beyond the school gates. 

The ultimate problem for those who wish to see exams consigned to the history books is that scrapping exams in our schools risks simply moving them further down the educational process. Ultimately, removing exams from our school system will not mean young people never face them.

If exams are not taken in schools, then universities, colleges and even employers will likely choose to implement them. If pupils are likely to face exams at some stage in their career paths, then surely it is more beneficial to those young people that they first encounter them in controlled, universal settings such as schools, where everyone will have the fairest opportunity to succeed? 

Exams are a longstanding institution of not just our own education system, but of the majority of systems around the world. Their importance, and their ultimate necessity, is something that is tried, tested and well proven. 

READ MORE: Exams return in 2022 but fears of assessment ‘overload’

So while those on the other side of this debate might claim that arguing to keep exams in our schools is now an indefensible position, in reality the onus is very much on them to show why such radical and risky reform is necessary. 

When it comes to education, change for change’s sake is something that should be firmly resisted. There is currently cheap political capital to be gained by calling for exams to be scrapped, with the claim that it would remove an outdated, unnecessary feature of our education system. 

But to do so, and end the central role exams have successfully played in Scotland’s education system, would do nothing to raise attainment, increase social mobility or help our young people get on in life. Quite the reverse. It would further damage the life chances of a generation of young people already so badly let down by an SNP Government and First Minister failing at their own “defining mission” to close the education attainment gap. 

Oliver Mundell MP is the education spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives