An independent regulator for national examinations set by the Scottish Qualifications Authority

As a result of the SQA’s failure to answer our direct questions, we sent a second letter pointing out the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the SQA’s first response and reiterating that we required specific answers to these questions.
The SQA’s reply stated that the RMPS Assessment Panel at their Autumn meeting had “considered our “feedback” in full with respect to this year’s examination ( i.e.2010) and confirmed that the questions were valid.” In fact this was not just “feedback” that I gave to the SQA but was a professional criticism of the validity and reliability of many of these assessments and marking instructions. I would therefore have expected a detailed and professional response to those substantiated criticisms. However, the SQA did not provide this and I subsequently also learned that our 70 page submission had not even been circulated or discussed at this meeting and that only our two page cover letter had been presented. How then could the SQA claim that they had “discussed the submission in full?
It was clear from this that the SQA representatives had withheld our full submission from Panel members. This has serious implications for the manner in which the SQA has dealt with these issues as it was now clear that “openness and transparency” from the SQA apparently does not apply to answering direct questions about the validity of their assessments.
Over the following 12 months (from October 2010 until October 2011) the school pursued these issues with the SQA, including a detailed letter to the Chief Executive herself explaining the SQA’s failure to answer our questions and requesting her to investigate the circumstances of the SQA’s failure to do so. However, even the Chief Executive refused to answer our questions and simply reiterated the SQA default position that these assessments were valid and reliable thus continuing to provide unsubstantiated claims concerning these issues.
Given this impasse, the Rector continued to insist that the SQA should give us a written answer to our many complaints and questions and we eventually received what the SQA termed “a full response” from the Director of Qualifications Development in early October 2011 (15 months after our initial correspondence with them). In this response none of our 196 questions was answered. However, the SQA stated that the issues we had raised “demonstrated a misunderstanding of the SQA approach to assessment” but did not explain why; it was simply another unsubstantiated statement and avoidance of the issues.

Following this totally inadequate and mostly irrelevant response, I personally replied to the SQA Director of Qualifications Development asking a number of further questions particularly about why she had not answered these specific complaints and questions. I also requested her to clarify several points she had made which were contrary to information given in the SQA Arrangements for the Higher RMPS Course. She failed to respond to these questions and stated that the SQA considered the matter closed and that, should I wish to pursue this, I should do so via the Ombudsman.

It is pertinent to state that, during the correspondence process with the SQA, it was apparent to us that the SQA were giving us misleading, irrelevant, contradictory and erroneous information; this was in addition to their significant procrastination in responding to us on a number of occasions and also making unsubstantiated statements regarding what they termed our “misunderstanding of the SQA examination processes.” We have documentary evidence to support these claims and, in addition, when I contacted the SQA requesting more specific information via the Freedom of Information Act, they continued to fail to provide answers to a number of these further questions in relation to the validity of questions and marking instructions.
The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO’s) “investigation” of m