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It must have been difficult to maintain any kind of meaningful communication with the young people during that time. Teachers were struggling as well. How did you cope?

There has been a lot of criticism of the SQA. The evidence that we have received—including even today—shows lots of criticism regarding communications, decision making and the timing of decisions. Given the circumstances that the country found itself in during the past 18 months, are those criticisms fair?

We can all be wise after the event—that is the reality. Tony, do you have anything to say on that?

We are now out of time.

It is a very different pathway in normal times.

We have a number of questions about the communications dimension, which we really want to understand more about.

Audrey, do you want to come in?

Did you catch the whole question?

We are going to have evidence later from the NASUWT—I have to get these acronyms right. It talks a lot about the “compression” that you have been describing in terms of assessment, how difficult it was—“impossible”, it says—for teachers to complete all the work that they were asked to do, including the quality assurance and certification, and about the effect that that had on the teachers. I am sure that you are conscious of that.

Welcome back. We will hear further evidence on the alternative certification model from our second panel of witnesses. I welcome Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland; Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association; and Tara Lillis, national official for Scotland at the NASUWT.

Thank you for providing us with your written submissions, which are very interesting and useful. We have a lot of ground to cover and not as much time as we would like, so we will move straight to questions unless any of you has something short and specific that you would like to say first. I see that you are all happy to move straight to questions.

Larry, you state on page 3 of your written submission that

“the Scottish Government or the SQA ... were determined to push ahead with national sampling of all courses”.

Did you ask for a rationale or a justification at the time for the Government’s determination to push on with that? If so, what did it say to you?

In your submission, you mention a number of times that you believe that there was a hugely political dimension. On page 3, you mention the awareness of the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections. How much of the decision making in the process was driven, in your view, by a political agenda from the Scottish Government?