There are changes to be made to the Scottish education system after the mess they made of publishing results this year. The Scottish Qualifications Authority, not wanting to do anything like the English, already have different examination systems in place but want to change it still further. Earlier this year a new computerised system was put into action but they messed up. Results for standard and higher exams were not only late, but wrong and in some cases in a foreign language. In order to stop this happening again the Scottish Qualifications Authority are imposing new regulations to stream-line and simplify the result procedure.

Just as well I got an A in Swahili otherwise we couldn't read this.

We asked the Jock in charge to explain this to us.

“‘Ach well, we figured, you knoo, that if it were simpler to get results then we would neigh have the problem. Our wee boffins came up with the idea that if the students got their results on the way out of the exam room then we wouldn’t have to go through all this posting nonsense and wed be way ahead of the English by months.”

“The way well do this is by providing a large visual aid for the invigilator. Each student will go into the examination room one by one, sit in front of the examiner who will proceed to ask quick fire questions to the students, each correct answer giving the student a point and the higher the points the higher the grades. Good eh? Is neigh difficult to do and the student doesn’t have the stress of waiting around for weeks to see if they pass or fail.”

We asked the Education and Employment Secretary, David Blunkett, what he thought of the new method. “O’ Bloody hell, give them a government and suddenly they think that they are capable of doing everything by themselves. What on Earth possessed them to think of an idea like that. You do realise that it will just going to give the Welsh ideas now.”

David Blunkett MP most pissed off!

Tests conducted on this new Jock method of examining show that it does work. Students who tried it out did get the right grade to coincide with their score on the test, it arrived on time, in Scottish and gave students a head start on the English for university placements. The Scottish Qualifications Authority failed to comment on whether the new exams actually gave the same grades as the old exams did.

“Of course the syllabus will have to change slightly,” Scottish Qualifications Authority chief executive Ron Tuck explains, “Arty subjects will obviously have to concentrate more on fact rather than on artistic expression, this is, however, good news for science which after all is the way forward. Besides neigh one can tell us what to do now, give them a few years and the English will catch up.”

Though DFTFC believed that this method of examination was in the experimental stages it would appear that the Scottish Qualifications Authority are ready to scrap their current system and go head with the new despite opposition from across the border. The Scottish reaction to this opposition was “If a man can neigh throw an eighteen foot log right around, in the air, then his opinion is neigh worth hearin’.”