The dynamic arena of professional road cycling in the Noughties and the torpid world of internal assessment in Scottish schools might have little in common in some regards, but I wonder if a relaxed approach towards wrongdoing gives them something in common.
At the turn of this century, Lance Armstrong was the golden boy of cycling. Winning the Tour de France more times than any other rider and with a perfect back story of fighting back from advanced testicular cancer, not to mention his awe-inspiring charity work, the American rider helped to popularise cycling to a new level. The effects can be seen today, by the number of bikes on every road you travel down.
The only problem was he was cheating on an industrial scale. However, it wasn’t in anyone’s interests to expose Armstrong. Obviously, he and his team didn’t want to be caught; and, if the champion was found to be not riding clean, then the whole sport would be devalued, so the suspicions weren’t pursued as vigorously as they should have been.
Quick read: Proven cases of qualifications ‘malpractice’ soar
Long read: How we reported exam results day in 2018
One teacher’s view: Are National 4 passes handed out too easily?
Gathering much smaller headlines was the publication of the qualifications malpractice figures for the academic year 2017-18, where the number of cases found proven had more than doubled from the previous year, from 51 to 143, creating an unwanted record. But rather than worrying over such a large percentage rise in the bending of the rules, my concern would be why is the capture rate so low? Internal assessments are used in virtually every subject studied by pupils from S4-6, so these 143 cases would amount to a tiny percentage of the hundreds of thousands of assessments submitted last year.
Exam malpractice: the tip of the iceberg?
To be clear, I don’t think there is a widespread aggressive racket in internal assessment grade inflation, but the system does rely on an assumption of the integrity of the teacher. This uprightness might be tested, however, by pressure from a school hoping to perform better in the exam results league table or from an individual teacher’s misplaced loyalty towards their pupils.
You could argue that it isn’t in the Scottish Qualifications Authority’s (SQA) interests to vigorously pursue those teachers who might be gaming the internal assessment system: if it was discovered that cheating was endemic, then the national qualifications system - with its emphasis on assessment undertaken away from the eyes of an invigilator - would be devalued.
This would leave two unpalatable solutions: a return to a system of qualifications based on exam results only or employing more SQA assessors to oversee the work of teachers. The first, however, would unfairly disadvantage the large numbers of young people who don’t perform well in the pressurised conditions of an exam hall, while the latter would be expensive to run.
And so the current system, based on trusting the integrity of the teacher, might just be the best option we have - but we need to make sure the right checks and balances are in place.
Gordon Cairns is a teacher of English in Scotland
