Crisis In The Classroom

In the summer of 2000, Scottish education suffered its worst crisis ever. What was supposed to be a revolutionary new exam system collapsed under the weight of its own data. Students received exam certificates that were either wrong or late, while some didn't receive anything at ll. Every one of the 147,000 certificates had to be re-checked, yet still there were massive anomalies, triggering an unprecedented number of appeals against the grades which students had been awarded.The affair blew up into a major political crfisis for the Scottish government, as ministers and officials repeatedly tried to under-play the magnitude of the crisis, and were repeatedly shown to be far off the mark. The Scottish Parliament's education committee launched an enquiry to try to get at the truth of who was responsible and who could have prevented the breakdown happening.This book looks at which the fiasco happened and asks if the mess can be sorted out. It questions whether the whole reform of Scotland's exams was misconceived and examines what the lessons are to be learnt for how educational reforms are pushed through.