National 5 Physical Education

Following recommendations from our colleagues at Scottish Disability Sport, we’ve updated the list of acceptable activities in the National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher performance coursework assessment tasks. The list now includes boccia and goalball.

We've also updated the coursework assessment tasks to clarify the following:

• Para versions of each activity on the list are also acceptable.
• Wheelchair and/or powerchair activities can only be chosen by learners with physical disabilities who use a wheelchair and/or powerchair to take part in sport and physical activity.
• Goalball can only be chosen by learners with a severe visual impairment.
• Boccia can only be chosen by learners with profound physical disabilities.

The ‘Suggested learning and teaching approaches’ section of the updated National 5 and Higher course specifications contains an example of the use of a para version of an activity.

In the updated National 5 course specification, we’ve included an example of a Paralympian as a model performer, and in the Higher course specification we’ve included a link to the British Paralympic Association as a resource for learning in Appendix 4.

These updates will help make our Physical Education courses more accessible to all learners. We hope it will encourage more disabled learners to study Physical Education as part of their National Qualifications.

The updated documents are valid from session 2024-25.

View our news article – update on National Courses for session 2024-25 onwards (13 March 2024).

We've added a statement to the National 5 Physical Education course specification and portfolio coursework assessment task document to advise that SQA will not award marks for any text that candidates have directly copied from the marking instructions.

Both documents contain now contain the statement, ‘Candidates must not directly copy the examples provided in the additional guidance section of the marking instructions. They cannot obtain marks if they use these examples.’

We made this change following the 2024 exams. During the marking of exams and coursework, our marking teams sometimes identify areas of the course documents and assessment materials that could be made clearer. It’s normal practice for us to respond to this feedback and review the documents. The updated documents are dated August 2024 and are available from the 'Course specification' and 'Coursework' tabs below.