The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exams get underway tomorrow (Thursday 25 April) for tens of thousands of young people across Scotland.
Exams begin in the morning, with students across the country tackling question papers in PE, Latin, mathematics of mechanics, and administration and IT.
Key dates and figures
*The Scottish exams start on Thursday 25 April and run until Friday 31 May, meaning that many thousands of students around the country are preparing to go on study leave.
*More than 136,000 students will receive their results on Tuesday 6 August.
*More than half-a-million individual exams for National 5, Higher, and Advanced Higher qualifications will be sat by more than 126,000 candidates in over 450 schools and colleges across the country.
*This is the first year that students will face revised assessments for courses at Higher level, following the withdrawal of internal unit assessments.
*Many thousands of students will also be in the final stages of completing National 1-4 qualifications, Skills for Work Courses and other awards that are continually-assessed throughout the year.
*Some 15,000 “appointees” - teachers and subject specialists - support SQA over the course of the exams, helping the awarding body to set, invigilate and mark more than one million exam scripts every year.
*Students still have time to register and activate a MySQA account so they can receive their grades by text or email on results day - they should log onto www.mysqa.info and register for the service with their unique Scottish Candidate Number by 5pm on Tuesday 16 July.
*So far, more than 53,000 candidates have signed up for MySQA this year, with over 46,000 candidates already activating their accounts. All candidates will still receive a copy of their Scottish Qualifications Certificate by post on Tuesday 6 August.
