Education / Stop exams for secondary pupils and end primary school homework, Greens say
THE SCOTTISH Green party has pledged to stop homework for primary school children and get rid of the “high stakes” exams system for secondary pupils if elected.
Green councillor and Scottish parliamentary candidate Alex Armitage gave his backing to the plans, which were unveiled in the party’s election manifesto over the weekend.
Homework can have a “negative impact on learning” for primary school children, the party has claimed, due to younger children’s lack of motivation to do work outside of school.
And Scottish Greens want to abolish the “Victorian” school exams system, which they say puts too much pressure on pupils.
Co-leader Ross Greer said that a “bad cold or poor night’s sleep” was all it took for a student to miss out on the grade they deserved.
Instead the Greens are proposing that a student’s grade is based on work they have completed throughout the year, which it said would be a “far more accurate and rounded measure of their knowledge and abilities”.
Explaining the party’s call to abolish homework for primary pupils, Greer said that extra schoolwork offered “little, if any, proven benefit”.
“It can dampen rather than encourage curiosity, turning education into something to dread rather than love,” he said.
“Children need time to play, to explore and to socialise with each other after school. Homework gets in the way of these learning opportunities.
“We can’t just stick with homework because it’s what we’ve always done. We need to think big, be bold and embrace this chance to fix the system.”
Armitage, who is standing to represent the party at Holyrood as MSP for Shetland, said he did not think the changes were “particularly radical”.
“Our education system was developed in the Victorian era, when society was very different to how it is today,” he told Shetland News.
“Homework and exams are both aspects of our current education system that put too much focus on the individual student.
“Some focus on individual achievement is needed but we also need young people to learn how to work in teams, to communicate and collaborate.
“Homework and exams are not good at developing or testing these skills and moreover can be harmful.”
Armitage said it “does not make sense to me” that school grades effectively boiled down to a young person’s ability to perform in an exam hall after a decade of learning.
“It’s desperately unfair that young person can miss out on an apprenticeship or a dream university course just because they slept poorly or were ill on the morning of an exam,” he said.
“In recent years there has been a move to more of a student’s grade coming from coursework and I think this should continue.”
He added that schools should not be judged on the strength of their pupils’ exam results, calling it “nonsensical”.
“The pressure for schools to demonstrate good exam results means that teachers are overly incentivised to coach students to pass exams,” he said.
“I’d love to see more Shetland specific education – we have such a rich and unique history, language, economy, culture, literature and cuisine, it would be great to see this more reflected in our education system.”
Armitage said that there needed to be more routes of “non-academic education for young people”, starting from the beginning of secondary school.
“There are hundreds of young people in Shetland who are not motivated by academic education and would be far better served with a more practical, skills-based education.
“It’s been great to see the introduction of college courses being made available to young people from S3 level, which has seen an enthusiastic uptake.
“We need to continue moving in this direction.”
The full list of other confirmed candidates standing for the Shetland seat at May’s election, in alphabetical order, are: Vic Currie (Reform Party), John Erskine (Labour), Hannah Mary Goodlad (SNP), Emma Macdonald (Liberal Democrats), Brian Nugent (Alliance to Liberate Scotland).
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