Scottish Labour is demanding a ministerial statement on “the chaos surrounding last year’s Higher history exam” and “handling of this fiasco” by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), saying “huge questions” remained unanswered.
The review, published earlier this month, was carried out after teachers and parents raised concerns about the drop in the Higher history pass rate this year.
Just 65.7 per cent of students this year attained an A-C grade, a drop of 13.1 percentage points since 2023.
The fall was originally highlighted in Tes Scotland in August. At the time, the SQA said there was “no change to the approach or standard of the Higher history question papers”, but that there was “a drop in learners’ performance in the question papers”.
However, SQA markers and teachers disputed this and plans for a review were made public on Friday 20 September. Concerns centred on paper two, which focuses on Scottish history. They said there were changes made to the marking standards in 2024, with students required to give more detail than in previous years to gain full marks.
Ultimately, the review concluded that the standard was “not higher than that set in previous years” and that “candidates were not expected to be more specific when answering in order to gain marks than in previous years”.
It blamed “the poor standard of performance demonstrated by learners” for the drop in pass rate.
Teachers question findings of SQA Higher history review
However, teachers continue to question why, if the cohort this year was poor, other subjects did not suffer a similar drop in passes.
The review, meanwhile, does acknowledge that markers gave “mixed feedback on the marking instructions”.
Some markers said the instructions were “very clear and well laid out” and “excellent as usual”, but other comments chimed with the concerns that teachers had been expressing. One marker commented that “the standard appeared to be much stricter this year for certain topics”; another said it was “harsh”.
Now, the Scottish Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy is saying that the education secretary Jenny Gilruth “must come before the Parliament and provide some much-needed answers on this saga”.
She said: “The SNP has huge questions to answer about the chaos surrounding last year’s Higher history exam and the SQA’s handling of this fiasco.
“At every turn, the SNP has covered for the SQA instead of standing up for pupils and teachers.”
Responding to the call a Scottish government spokesperson said the SQA review had been independently peer reviewed by the Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) which had “agreed that its conclusions and recommendations are supported by evidence”.
The spokesperson added: ”“The Scottish government has accepted the findings of the SQA’s report, including improving how feedback received from markers is considered.”
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