Purpose

Assessment Arrangements presents a summary of assessment arrangements requested for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher courses.

Status

These data are classified as information.

Description

This publication details data captured from assessment arrangement requests for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher assessments for an academic year (e.g. 2024 covers the academic year from 2023 to 2024) and includes data for previous years (nominally 4 years, where available). Further information about assessment arrangements and the system and process for requesting them is available on the SQA website.

Assessment arrangements allow candidates who are disabled, and/or have been identified as having additional support needs, access to appropriate arrangements to complete the assessment without compromising its integrity.

Source of data

These figures are derived from SQA operational data.

Methodology

Duplicate request information is removed as well as withdrawn (centre has withdrawn the entry) and invalid (inconsistent data) requests.

Counts of assessment arrangements are based on the candidate record by subject and level. For example, a candidate with requests relating to both National 5 and Higher Mathematics qualifications will be counted once in the National 5 requests and once in the Higher requests table.

For each assessment arrangement request, multiple assessment arrangements categories can be requested; each arrangement is counted based on whether the associated data is present or missing.

The breakdown by centre type shows Education Authority - Secondary School, Education Authority - Special School, Independent - Secondary School, Independent - Special School and FE College. All remaining centre types, including training providers, voluntary sector organisations, HM Armed Forces, prisons and primary schools are reported as ‘Other’.

Confidentiality and rounding

All figures are rounded to the nearest five. Figures between one and four inclusive have been suppressed to protect against the risk of disclosure of personal information. Cells containing suppressed figures are marked up with the shorthand [c].

Totals are calculated using figures prior to rounding; the sum of rounded figures may differ from the total reported.

Limitations

SQA external assessments did not go ahead in 2020 and 2021 due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, assessment arrangement data for these years are not available.

For assessment arrangement requests which include free-text responses under “Any other arrangements”, a count of 1 arrangement is recorded for every request with a response. In some cases, the free text may list more than one arrangement but responses are always treated as one arrangement request.

Centres often submit multiple assessment arrangements within each subject/level request but also include contingency arrangements in these requests. SQA do not hold information on whether (and which) assessments arrangements requested are actually used when assessments take place.

Finally, requests for assessment arrangements are made at the subject level rather than at component level. For example, a request for coloured paper in a Higher modern language qualification may be used for any (or all) of the components that involve a written assessment (‘examination paper’) but would be unlikely to be required for a speaking assessment component.

Information Governance

The data in this publication is defined as being statistical for the purposes of information governance and data protection. This primarily means that the associated processing is not carried out for the purposes of measures or decisions with respect to a particular data subject. Further information on this processing category can be found in the appropriate data protection legislation.

Revisions and corrections

Once published these statistics are not usually subject to revisions. Further information about revisions and corrections is available in our policy document.

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