Higher ESOL

We’re hosting Understanding Standards webinars for ESOL courses on the following dates.

• Thursday 14 November 2024 (10:00 – 12:00) – National 2 ESOL Literacies unit
• Tuesday 3 December 2024 (16:30 – 17:30) – National 2, National 3 and National 4 ESOL
• Tuesday 14 January 2025 (16:30 – 17:30) – National 5 and Higher: speaking and listening performance
• Tuesday 21 January 2025 (16:30 – 17:30) – National 5 and Higher exams

These webinars will focus on the standards required for assessment and will discuss examples.

To book a place, please use our online booking system at athena.sqameet.net. You’ll need a username and password to access the booking system.

ESOL courses are for learners who speak English as a second or other language, who have been receiving English as an additional language (EAL) or ESOL support throughout their secondary school education while living in Scotland or other parts of the UK. 

ESOL courses are not appropriate for learners whose first language is English, or learners who don’t need EAL or ESOL support in their learning. These learners would be more suited to English courses. 

English and ESOL courses are equivalent qualifications, which are intended for different groups of learners based on their language needs. They are not designed for dual presentation, so centres must not enter a learner for both English and ESOL courses in the same session. 

We understand that identifying whether a learner is best suited to studying English or ESOL is not always straightforward. To support centres with this, we produced our guide Who are SQA ESOL qualifications for? (102 KB), which provides more information on eligibility for ESOL courses.  

This guide is available from the ‘Related Information’ section below.  

Higher ESOL is already accepted at universities for entry into secondary teacher education courses. We’re pleased to advise that Higher ESOL will now be accepted at universities across Scotland for entry into all primary teacher education courses for 2025-26 onwards.  

This is a welcome development, which confirms Higher ESOL’s status as a fully equivalent qualification to Higher English for UCAS applications to university courses in Scotland.  

The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) has provided more information in Appendix A of its 2024 Memorandum on entry requirements to programmes of Initial Teacher Education in Scotland, which is available from the GTCS website.