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The ongoing problems with the SQA and Higher History are now becoming completely ridiculous.

Before I explain why, let’s just make sure you’re up to speed.

The 2024 Higher History exams took place on the morning of the 21st of May.

More than ten thousand students sat the exams and the pass rate was 65.7% – a thirteen percentage point drop from the previous year.

Dig a little deeper and it gets worse, because in the Scottish History paper (which every student has to complete) the national average score collapsed, falling by 25% from 20.6 to 15.3 marks.

According to the people that know best – current History teachers, including active exam markers – the reason for all this was clear: the SQA changed the marking arrangements after the exam had taken place.

Specifically, students were required to give significantly more detail when responding to certain questions than has ever been the case in the past. I’ve explained a bit more about this part of the story in a previous article, which you can read here.

This change in policy was described as ‘moving the goalposts’ (and a lot of other things that aren’t printable here) and resulted in students up and down the country receiving lower grades than expected. I’m told that some missed out on university places.

But the SQA absolutely point-blank refused to accept that there was a problem.

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