Scotsman head of news Dale Miller talks to education correspondent Calum Ross who has spent the morning in an exam result debrief from the SQA
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday. My name's
00:12Dale Miller. I'm Head of News at the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Education Correspondent
00:17Callum Ross. Callum, on what is a very big day for I think 145,000 pupils across the
00:24country and their parents, of course. No one worries more than the parents. So we'll get
00:30into that shortly. I just want to talk about the front page of the Scotsman firstly. And
00:36we've got Sir Keir Starmer calling for riders to be named and shamed as part of the crackdown.
00:41We saw John Swinney at Edinburgh Central Mosque yesterday. He was speaking to key leaders
00:49from the Muslim community and just voicing the fact that currently there is no intel
00:54about similar riots coming to Scotland. We do know that there is a so-called pro-UK rally
01:00that has been promoted for Glasgow to be held on September 7th. So I think there's still concerns
01:06that the unrest in England could shift and we could see something up here in Scotland. But
01:12certainly the message from John Swinney is that such actions will not be tolerated and Police
01:19Scotland are watching what develops. Callum, I want to get back to exam results because you
01:27can get all the latest. We've got a live blog up and running on the site, www.scotsman.com.
01:33And also your initial take of what's come out of the results as a whole. Can you just talk us
01:40through it? It's a big day for a lot of people. Absolutely, Dale. It is a big day. It's also
01:45been a hectic morning this morning at the SQA. I'm here at the SQA HQ in Glasgow. I was just
01:53getting into Central Station this morning. I started getting texts, emails, messages about
02:00an issue with the emails that the SQA had sent out to learners. Blank emails, essentially.
02:10They'd been expecting to get their exam results and they were getting blank emails instead. A
02:16bit of a chaotic issue. Speaking to colleagues here, there's reports of some learners being
02:24told by universities that they've been accepted or rejected into a course before they'd actually
02:30even seen their own results. I'm just out of a briefing with SQA officials. We're told that
02:38about 5% of the 145,000 learners getting their results today had signed up for this email-only
02:47way. That's just over 7,000 learners affected. That doesn't include learners that maybe signed
02:54up for text and email. Many of these people, of course, will be people who might be on holiday
02:59and things like that, who aren't going to be home to get the post. SQA Chief Exec Fiona
03:08Robertson has just told us she's sending her apologies to the learners affected.
03:14She says it was fixed by half nine this morning. She said there is an investigation underway,
03:21it seems, and she mentioned that talks had been had with a supplier. I'm not quite sure yet who
03:27the supplier is. Anyway, all this has overshadowed a bit the actual results, which are of huge
03:35interest as well, of course. They show the ABC pass rate at higher has fallen again, back down
03:42to pretty much where we were before the pandemic at 74.9% this year. That's just 0.1% above what
03:54it was in 2019 and down just over 2% on last year. National 5, same at 77.2% this year. That's below
04:0578% in both 2023 and 2019 before the pandemic. Big change at advanced higher. The pass rate's
04:14down to 75.3%, kind of almost four percentage points lower than both last year and 2019. Now,
04:22apparently this is to do with a big increase in the number of presentations at advanced higher,
04:28so 18% increase in presentations at advanced higher since 2019, which the SQA says is good
04:36news. The other big kind of story that a lot of people will focus on, I would imagine, is the
04:41poverty-related attainment gap. You know, there's big S&P commitments to kind of close this gap
04:49between the performance, the attainment performance between the rich pupils from the poorest and
04:55richest areas. It's now at 17.2 percentage points. That's wider than last year when it was 16%. It's
05:03also kind of wider than it was back in 2019 to 16.9%. That will be to do with issues relating
05:11to the pandemic. You know, we've heard a lot about falling attendance and things like that.
05:16So, there is still kind of recovery from the pandemic happening there. And one other thing I
05:22should mention, I've not had a chance to look at the figures in any detail yet, but Jenny Gilruth,
05:28the Education Secretary, in her kind of reaction to the exam results today has mentioned that
05:35there's been a wide degree of variation in the results between the 32 local authority areas.
05:42That suggests, you know, there's been, you know, a big difference in some parts of Scotland compared
05:47to other parts of Scotland in terms of exam results. So, I think that could be an issue
05:52that we hear more about in the coming hours and days. She said she's going to be meeting
05:59with education directors, local authority education directors, and the chief inspector as well. So,
06:04yeah, it's all go here. A lot happening. If my maths are correct, we're talking
06:117,000-8,000 pupils that had signed up on based on the 5% for this service.
06:17It's a lot of people that got a blank email. So, it is an issue. Callum, can I ask you between that
06:23and the widening of the attainment gap again at a time when the Scottish government's trying to
06:29reform the education system, what sort of messages do you think this is sending not only to the
06:35experts, the teachers, etc., but also, you know, parents out there who may have their children
06:42coming into doing exams in the next 12 to 24 months? I mean, should people be worried about
06:48the general direction of travel, do you think? Well, I mean, that's an interesting question.
06:54One of the reasons for this general direction of travel is it's almost deliberate. You know,
06:59it's the way the SQA decides to grade, you know, these exams. And in the wake of the pandemic,
07:06you know, when exams were obviously cancelled in 2020 and 2021, and when they came back in 2022,
07:14there was a generous approach to grading, which kind of took account of the impact,
07:20the disruption to learning. And last year, again, there was a sensitive approach to grading. This
07:26year, we're pretty much back to where we were before the pandemic in terms of the way the SQA
07:31has approached the exam marking. So that explains the direction a bit. But it's all going to
07:38certainly kind of add to the demands for reform of the, you know, qualification system. There's
07:45been proposals on Jenny Garou's desk for over a year. She said this morning, there's going to be
07:51an announcement in the first few weeks of the new parliamentary term. So we'll see what comes
07:56there. But to be honest, the whole issue with the blank emails as well is also just going to,
08:00you know, add to the sense that there needs to be change with the SQA. There's plans to replace it.
08:06But big reforms have been promised for a long time. I think there'll just be more calls to get on with
08:12that. You can read all the latest on the fallout from those blank emails, and exactly what has
08:20happened to pass rates across the country at Scotsman.com. We've got full coverage up
08:24and is leading our homepage currently. Please follow Callum on X, follow our Scotsman main
08:33site as well, across all social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.
08:38And for a full wrap of where we are at the end of the day and the political fallout,
08:43pick up a copy of the Scotsman in print tomorrow. Thanks very much for joining us.