THE SQA PATHWAY

What are Highers?

Some parents will be very familiar with Scottish Highers - having maybe sat them yourselves 'back in the day'. Highers are one year courses which follow on from National 5 - though the content and pace of learning can be very different.

Scottish Highers are regarded highly in Scotland: not least because of the volume of content, the quick pace and the exacting assessment after around seven months.

There is only one qualification system on offer in Scotland - unlike south of the border where there are many different awarding bodies - which means that is the route all Local Authority run schools follow. This means that Highers are by far the most widely understood and popular school based qualification in Scotland.

The Higher has been ‘reimagined’ many times over the years, and has undergone quite significant change in this time. Even in my own time as a teacher I have known: the old Higher, Revised Higher, Higher Still and now Higher Nationals.

However some fundamental things have stayed the same. Highers are uniquely Scottish: they are designed to be a one session course (though some pupils will complete them over two), and usually they are taken in S5.

SQA: The Awarding Body

Highers and Advanced Highers are awarded by the SQA - the Scottish Qualifications Authority. Until their merger, the two major examination authorities in Scotland were the SEB (Scottish Examination Board) and the Scottish Vocational Education Council (SCOTVEC). The SEB issued the school-level examinations, then called Standard Grade, Higher Grade and Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (CSYS) whereas SCOTVEC offered vocational modules. Most schools in Scotland work with SQA, and all Scottish Universities and Colleges recognise and accept their qualifications. Last year there were over 36,000 Higher entries across Scotland. Of course, this year, SQA is in the process of quite significant change and at the time of writing we are unsure what that means for the organisation beyond August 2022. Things may be set to change quite dramatically.

SCQF

Highers are part of the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework, or SCQF, which is a tool designed to compare the full range of Scottish qualifications and illustrate progression all the way through to Doctorate degree level. It covers achievements such as those from school, college, university, and many work-based qualifications too by giving each qualification a level and a number of credit points depending on how difficult the learning is. Each credit point represents an average of 10 hours of learning. A Higher is worth 24 credits (240 hours) at level 6, Advanced Higher is 24 credits at level 7.

Structure, Coursework and Assessment

Highers form the basis of most Scottish University offers. They are demanding courses, usually comprising three units and an exam, and are brimming with content. Although Highers are viewed as a year long qualification they are in effect completed in less than seven months of teaching because of school holidays, the Prelim exam diet in January and the main exam diet which begins in April.

Most Highers comprise coursework - ranging from 20-60% across different subjects - and there are also internal assessments to pass. At Lomond, Higher Maths is the only Higher subject without any coursework. Coursework is typically sent to SQA in March, and is marked by a specially trained team. These marks are not shared with pupils or teachers, but are combined with the final examination marks and released to pupils in August.

It is possible to get a breakdown of component marks, but pupils are not allowed to see their papers and nor are we. SQA run a post-results service which offers the opportunity for a re-mark if recommended by teachers - but the days of appeals are, sadly, gone.

The fast pace of the course, the volume of content and the amount of assessment mean that great stamina is required to attain well at Higher. The statistics bear this out: SQA report that in 2019, around 14% of Local Authority school pupils passed 5 Highers. In independent schools across the country, that figure rises to 44%. Around 3% of Local Authority pupils gain 5 As; in the independent sector the figure sits around 20%.

At Lomond our statistics surpass all of those. Across the past two years, half of our pupils achieved straight As in their Highers, with nearly 90% of all Higher passes at an A or a B. In fact, even with all the adjustments made by SQA at the behest of the DFM, Lomond Higher pass rates were still in excess of ten percentage points more than the national average.

All Highers are assessed externally through a final examination. These vary in terms of length and number of papers depending on the subject. In recent years we have seen these papers getting longer - I think Higher Chemistry for example is around 3 hours. The SQA examination diet spans about 5 weeks - in 2022 Higher and AH exams will run from 27 April to 1 June.

Highers are graded A - D with grades A-C classed as passes and D as a 'near miss' - not a pass. Less than 40% is a 'No Award'.

Typically grade cut off scores are around 50% for a C, 60 for a B and 70 for an A though these vary by subject depending on the difficulty of the exam and performance overall, and they are adjusted every year by SQA and published just after results are released in the second week of August. To discriminate a little further, each grade is split into two - an upper and lower band. The top band therefore would be a Band 1 A, usually awarded when a pupil has achieved above 85% in their exam and coursework combined. A lower A is a Band 2 with an upper B being a Band 3 and so on. Unfortunately, there is no additional UCAS credit for achieving a Band 1 A.

Choosing Highers

At Lomond School, our pupils would typically choose four or five Highers from their (usually) eight national 5 subjects. No Highers are compulsory, though many pupils continue with Maths and English, a social subject, a science and a language. We encourage pupils to keep their options open in terms of taking a breadth of subjects which demonstrates their ability over a range of disciplines and curricular areas. If a pupil specialises too early and focuses too much on subjects from just one or two disciplines, they can find themselves under pressure in S6. This is because S6 is when UCAS applications are made, and when pupils are starting to think of their choices of courses. As they 'drill down' to entry requirements, they can often find that the entry requirements of their preferred course at University does not align with the subjects they've taken thus far. This means that they need to pick up a particular science, or sometimes even Maths or English if they didn't take it in S5.

Some University courses have quite specific entry requirements at Higher. For example, for medicine, pupils should always choose Biology, Chemistry and Maths or Physics; it's a common misconception that three sciences are required. They are absolutely not.

A combination of Physics and Maths - or Maths, Chemistry and Physics - would be required for certain Engineering courses. For architecture, the 'must haves' are Maths and Art.

Mrs McKenzie and Mrs Ferguson will be offering more specific UCAS and Careers advice further on in the year but if you have any immediate burning questions of course the would be delighted to answer help - please do just drop either an email via admin@lomondschool.com.

Beyond School

As pupils make their choices for S5 we always ask for a loose indication of what they wish to do when they leave school to ensure we can offer the right advice regarding subject choices. If you check the small print for admission into some University courses, B grades in N5 English, Maths and some sciences are mandatory. This has been known to cause issues when, further down the line, the pupil concerned has a good clutch of Higher passes, but is missing a vital N5.

Although there can be new subjects on offer in S5, we don’t recommend that a pupil ‘crashes’ a Higher in a subject they have not previously studied. We call it ‘crashing’ for a reason! Far better to play to their strengths and build on a foundation of knowledge they already have. We say this every year but the jump from National 5 to Higher is considerable, and moving from a two year course where teachers have scope to reinforce certain tricky aspects of the learning and even maybe go a little off piste to explore different topics and concepts as a matter of interest for the pupils, to a real ‘two term dash’ can be a bit of a culture shock and it can take a while to settle to the fast pace.

University Entry

Universities have 'minimum' and 'standard' entry requirements. They do not all require five Highers - the 'minimum' requirement for many courses would usually be four Highers at first sitting. But as you will know, competition has increased for courses these last two years, and often the minimum entry requirements listed on a University website are not enough to guarantee entry. For some of the more competitive courses such as Vet Medicine, Medicine, Law and Dentistry five A grades in one sitting still do not guarantee entry. There are so many layers to the application process: grades, personal statement, interview, references. Those of you who have had children go through the UCAS process will know that Higher grades are only the first part of the journey for applicants.

Really, the key objective in S5 is to achieve as many Highers, at as high a grade, as possible in a single sitting - that is ‘on your first try’ - as you can. If you don’t pass first time, it may be that - unless your course specifically requires it - it would be better just to choose a ‘fresh’ Higher in S6, because re-sitting a Higher you have previously studied rarely adds value to a UCAS application. We would always recommend speaking to Mrs McKenzie first, then getting in touch with the University Admissions Office in question to check current advice.

The UCAS Tariff (formerly called UCAS Points System) is used to allocate points to post-16 qualifications. Universities and colleges may use, along with the personal statement, reference, interview and any other mandatory test scores (such as the UKCAT, LNAT etc) when making offers to applicants. A points total is achieved by converting qualifications such as AH, H and A levels (and many others) into points, making it simpler for course providers to compare applicants. It is used as a means of giving students from the UK places at UK universities.