Sunset Song, the classic Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel, has been removed from the Scottish set text list for Higher English in response to low uptake and a Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) survey that found over 60 per cent of teachers and students felt it should be replaced.
Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns, has also been removed from the list as a discrete writer - although his work appears in two new anthologies of poetry aimed at students studying National 5 and Higher. Previously, it was only possible to study Burns at Higher.
The SQA says the updated list for 2025-26 “retains stability, with all of the high-uptake texts and writers remaining”.
However, “a number of texts are being replaced in order to allow more modern and diverse texts to be added to the list”.
‘Lowest uptake’ of all Higher texts
Sunset Song - which is former first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s “favourite book of all time” - was voted Scotland’s favourite book in a 2016 BBC poll and has been a go-to novel in schools’ English courses for generations, but the SQA says it now has “the lowest uptake of all the Higher texts”.
For the same reasons, Burns has been removed as a discrete writer at Higher - now only two of his poems remain on the list as part of two new Scottish poetry collections.
Previously, only collections by single authors or poets were available for study, but in this update, a new collection of Scottish short stories and two new Scottish poetry collections - anthologies covering a wide time period - are available.
Students can therefore study a Burns poem at Higher and National 5, which was not possible previously. However, Burns can now only be studied alongside other authors.
The same is also true of Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown: previously, Higher candidates could study a collection of his short stories, but now he features only in the new anthology of short stories at National 5 and Higher.
The retention of Burns in the poetry collections is to acknowledge his “cultural significance and cultural value”, says a report on the Scottish set text refresh; although uptake was low, “over half of practitioners and learners felt that Burns should still feature on the list”.
In 2024, just 57 Higher candidates chose to answer the Scottish text question on Sunset Song out of a cohort of over 35,000; for Burns, there were 83 candidates.
In contrast, over 12,000 candidates chose to answer using the poems of Carol Ann Duffy - the most popular author at Higher; another poet, Norman MacCaig, was the focus of around 8,000 responses.
At least four years for new texts and writers
The updated list will be reviewed in four years. It includes the 2021 novel Duck Feet (Ely Percy) and Gaelic-language play Sequamur (Donald S Murray) and works by author Jenni Fagan, poets Imtiaz Dharker and Kathleen Jamie, and playwright David Greig.
The SQA highlighted that there is a complete free choice of text selection in all other aspects of English courses. Scottish texts and writers can also be used for the critical essay section, and more widely across English courses at all levels.
Andy Leask, head of English at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, described the changes involving Sunset Song and Burns as “a pragmatic response to the fact that almost no one is teaching them”.
However, he took issue with the way Scottish literature is assessed at Higher, describing it as “intellectually reductive”.
The Scottish set text section of the exam requires students to carry out an extract analysis, but Mr Leask argued an essay-style question would be better as it would challenge students more.
He said: “If people really want to teach Sunset Song, they can teach it for the critical essay - it’s there as an option. You can teach anything you want for the critical essay. It’s a dangerous precedent to say ‘this text must be on the list for this particular component in the exam’. The Scottish text component should not be the only Scottish literature our students are encountering.
“But it would be better if, instead of being an extract analysis, it was an essay-based response. That would free us up a little bit more and the SQA could either not specify at all - or they could specify authors.”
The update to the Scottish set text list is the first since 2018 and only the second since it was originally published in 2013.
The initial intention was to refresh the list every three years, but the update due to begin in early 2020 was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘Clear’ demand for more diversity
SQA consultation on the list attracted over 2,500 responses from teachers and, for the first time, young people. Opinions were also sought from the Association for Scottish Literature, the Scottish Poetry Library and the University of Glasgow’s department of Scottish literature.
Robert Quinn, SQA head of English, languages and business, said the feedback was clear: teachers wanted to “retain the most popular texts, but they also wanted a list that is diverse and relevant for learners”.
“They wanted us to include more writers of colour, more female writers, more LGBTQ+ writers, and writers from a variety of backgrounds,” he added.
Students, meanwhile, “wanted to see more modern and diverse texts that had challenging themes and strong emotional content”.
The University of Glasgow will produce free resources to support all the new texts by around April 2025.
The full revised lists of Scottish set texts for each course are available on the SQA website from today.
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