Testing times for all our youngsters

Scotland has smart weans. So are we happy? No we’re suspicious.

What is it about the best ever exam results Scots just can’t accept?

The Higher pass rate has been creeping up from 75.2% in 2011, to 76.9% in 2012 and 77.4% this year. Standard Grades have sky-rocketed to 98.9% success this year too. So what’s not to like?

Well as Scottish Tory Education spokeswoman Liz Smith put it: “People find it hard to believe that, while employers are complaining about a lack of basic skills from school-leavers, exam performances are at an all-time high.”

And that’s really the nub of the problem isn’t it?

Everyday encounters don’t suggest we are suddenly surrounded by a mass of smart, alert, articulate and problem-solving kids.

Now admittedly a lot of jobs don’t give young folk the chance to shine. But even so, the mismatch raises a host of questions about those starry exam results.

Some academics said this year’s Maths Higher paper was too easy yet the pass rate finally fell. So maybe an “easy” paper was marked more severely? Who knows?

In general though schools are better at knowing who to present for exams and who to leave on the bench. Thus dead certs get prepared while borderline cases don’t get to sit the “wrong” exams. In which case, how much do exam results tell us about our kids?

Indeed never mind reciting The Merchant of Venice do they know how to stay alive?

Last week BBC documentary Long Live Britain demonstrated that perfectly “smart” Brits are in denial about the results of poor diet, no exercise and fast food. Kidney disease, diabetes, liver damage and ill health are common in our “educated” society.

Is there any sign our kids are learning not to repeat our mistakes? Not really. And is that because they still don’t know how the human body works, are too thrawn to listen or too busy learning bad habits from us?

The new Curriculum for Excellence aims to broaden thinking and end rote learning. But beyond the exams and curriculum an even bigger force is at work inequality.

If you live in Scotland’s poorest 10% of neighbourhoods you’re five times more likely to experience crime, twice as likely to have health problems resulting in emergency hospital admission and your kids will score only half the combined academic results of their more affluent peers. These dramatically unequal life chances belong to a dramatically unequal society. And they don’t get fixed at the end of the food chain when kids sit exams. They get fixed right at the start.

Scottish employers actually agree.

They placed the following top in a Future Skills survey: planning and organisation, customer handling, problem solving, team working and oral communication.

When are these ‘soft’ skills primarily learned between birth and three years old. Which age-group gets least education spending in Scotland birth to three. How are soft skills most easily acquired at that tender age? Through engaged play in traditional, extended families or in a well-run nursery.

Finland regularly tops international tests for English and Maths while Scotland sits somewhere in the middle. Finns have affordable, high quality childcare for kids between one and seven, primary teachers with masters degrees, few exams and no private education. But their society is more equal than ours with executives earning between two and four times average wages not inhabiting another financial stratosphere.

So let’s not dump on the kids. They’ve worked hard and done well. The next step change in exam results is really down to us.