Scotland’s inspection and curriculum development body has set out a plan to address concerns over exam results.

Education Scotland’s plan - which could include interventions with struggling schools and teachers - comes after a year-on-year drop in Higher passes. Tes Scotland previously reported that four subjects were the main contributors to that fall: English, maths, history and psychology.

Details of the plan were included in an analysis of 2019 exams and qualifications data published by the Scottish government last night.

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Education Scotland said that its senior education officers were “scrutinising SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) course reports” for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher, and would “identify key issues that require further support for practitioners in ensuring effective learning”.

Meanwhile, senior regional officers will discuss results with local authority education directors and identify schools that “need further support or challenge”, and “how best...Education Scotland can complement the existing local support”.

Learning and teaching support - including “guidance, course materials, or face-to-face support” - will be provided for subjects or courses “where there are specific issues identified through the analysis”, while Education Scotland senior education officers will work with teachers in schools “as appropriate”.

Education Scotland says that support for subjects may include:  helping set up “subject networks” where none currently exists; more “hands-on support” for specific subject areas; and “brokering and managing links between ‘SQA high-performing’ subject departments and those where performance is weaker”.

One area of concern is Higher history, where the pass rate dropped from 82.6 per cent in 2018 to to 72.8 per cent in 2019, with Education Scotland offering no view on what was responsible - it simply says that it is “in discussion with subject networks to explore the reasons behind this”.

But there is more clarity about falls in attainment for psychology at Higher - where the pass rate fell from 57.9 per cent in 2018 to 44.7 per cent in 2019 - and National 5.

Poorer psychology results could, for example, be partially explained by the following:

• The subject often being “seen as an attractive option by candidates [which] can lead to candidates underestimating [its] difficulty”.
• The lack of a National 4 in psychology led to students being “inappropriately presented” at National 5.
• An “absence of explicit psychology study in the [broad general education]”, which could result in” weaker prior attainment data upon which to select appropriate entry levels for candidates.
• “Variability” in appropriately qualified psychology teachers, although they are now “more readily available” since the introduction of a postgraduate course at the University of Strathclyde.