The national Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exam season returns tomorrow, for the first time since 2019.
Students will file into halls, arrange impromptu debriefs on their phones afterwards, then head home to cram and do it all over again for the next subject.
In some ways, then, it will be a return to the exams rhythm we were accustomed to back in those days when most of us had only encountered a pandemic in history books or Hollywood disaster movies.
A missive sent out by the SQA at around 4.45pm last Friday, however, was a reminder that we are still a long way from returning to a pre-Covid world.
Four days before the main exams period kicks off with politics and Latin - not forgetting that practicals in subjects such as music and drama have already taken place - the SQA emailed schools with the subject heading: ”Exams 2022 and public health advice: a joint message from the Scottish Government and SQA”.
This underlined that students missing exams because of Covid or Covid symptoms “as per the relevant public health guidance” could have an “examination exceptional circumstance request” submitted on their behalf.
But it becomes a little more complicated: while the exams start tomorrow, 26 April, public health advice changes five days later, on Sunday 1 May, after which “it is not recommended that children and young people (18 years and under) are tested for Covid-19 unless directed to by a health professional”.
So, a student with Covid symptoms who feels too unwell to sit an exam this week could take a PCR test to determine whether they have Covid - anyone in Scotland with a fever, a new and persistent cough or a loss or change in taste or smell is still, until 30 April, being told to book a PCR test.
After that, however, test sites will close and people with symptoms will no longer be told to seek a test.
And, as this change kicks in from 1 May, the SQA advice is clear: “There should be no requirement for an individual to produce evidence of a positive Covid-19 test for the purposes of the Examination Exceptional Circumstances Consideration Service.”
On social media over the weekend, some expressed concerns that students with good prelim results in the bank could simply declare they had Covid symptoms and sit out the exams, in the hope that this would guarantee them good results - and in doing so unleash “total chaos” on the exams system, with schools required to amass huge amounts of evidence on behalf of those students appealing.
At the very least, it seems likely that schools will have to field a lot of calls from anxious parents wondering if their child, who is perhaps feeling a bit under the weather, should soldier on or miss the exam. The advice from 1 May is to stay home if you have “a high temperature and feel unwell”, yet the SQA itself has acknowledged that parents could be “anxious about the impact public-health guidance may have on whether learners should attend exams if they feel unwell” and that “many” will turn to schools for clarity. As so often in fraught times for education, schools will take much of the strain.
However, School Leaders Scotland general secretary Jim Thewliss said this would be a “dangerous game to play”, with no guarantee for students of their desired outcome, while one teacher on Twitter reminded us that the SQA could be “notoriously harsh” in its appraisal of advice for students who had missed exams.
Amid all this, the next few weeks may have an upside for teachers who, until 2019, saw the study leave period as potential breathing space; a time to take stock and do some planning. One teacher tweeted at the weekend that the 2022 exam period would see them go instantly from teaching 27 periods to just 17. (They added, however, that experience shows this time invariably “vanishes” - one presumes that, in a Covid year, those valuable non-contact hours will be even harder to hold on to.)
Whatever actually happens between now and the final exams on 1 June, it’s a reminder that Covid goalposts are constantly shifting, that the pandemic removes certainty from schools’ planning, and that the confusion and stress of the past two years remains rife - just take a look at the manifestos for the 5 May local elections for proof of that.
In short, in no way does tomorrow mark the start of a post-Covid exams season.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
