In the wake of the 2024 Scottish Qualifications Authority exams, students in five subject areas were able to access their marked papers.
A survey of students and teachers followed, revealing that almost all students (97 per cent) thought access to papers should be expanded. This was a view shared by 71 per cent of teachers.
Nevertheless, the SQA now says it is pausing the rollout of the Access to Marked Exam Papers (AtMEP) service because of fears that expanding it to include higher-uptake subjects could lead to “unmanageable” workload for schools.
The upshot is that after the exams this year there will be no access to marked papers - although John Booth, SQA interim chief executive, says the body remains “committed to the service because of the benefits it will bring to learners and educators, as evidenced in the feedback”.
An SQA evaluation of the AtMEP trial makes it clear that teachers believe access to marked papers has the potential to improve learning and teaching, and students want access to improve their performance.
Access to marked SQA exam papers
However, the evaluation also raises some less comfortable issues for the SQA, with some teachers critical of the way the papers were marked.
One respondent said it was “frustrating, as a teacher, to find that marking instructions had changed from previous years with no prior warning given to centres”.
Another said that staff in their school had “concerns about the quality of the marking, having reviewed the papers”, while a third respondent said: “There were clear and obvious errors in the marking of a student’s written paper.”
The concerns about marking follow the fallout over Higher history last year, when the A-C pass rate dropped by 13 percentage points. This led to accusations that the marking standard had changed - although this was later rejected by an SQA review.
In 2024 the AtMEP trial led to more than 7,000 marked exam papers being downloaded, representing 17.3 per cent of available marked exam papers.
Marked exam papers were available from 6 August to 27 September for:
- Geography: National 5 and Higher
- Graphic communication: National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher
- Media: National 5
- Music: National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher
- Statistics: Advanced Higher (paper/component 1 and 2).
The proportion of downloads across subjects varied from 10.6 per cent for National 5 music to 42.3 per cent for Advanced Higher statistics.
Higher download rate in private schools
The evaluation shows no pattern in terms of the number of downloads being affected by the level of deprivation, “but independent schools’ download rate was 28.8 per cent compared to local authority schools’ download rate of 16.4 per cent”.
Orkney and South Ayrshire had the highest download rates (45.8 per cent and 43.8 per cent of entries respectively). Midlothian only had 11 downloads (1.9 per cent of entries).
After the trial the SQA conducted a practitioner survey, which attracted 390 responses, and a learner survey, which got 146 responses. Interviews and a focus group were also conducted.
Overall, 83 per cent of students and 65 per cent of practitioners agreed that they were satisfied with the AtMEP service in 2024 (4 per cent of learners and 22 per cent of practitioners disagreed).
The main intended purpose of the trial was to inform appeals. Learners who accessed their marked exam papers had higher rates of success in their appeals. However, the survey found students were mainly interested in downloading their marked papers in order to learn from them.
The SQA report states that students “thought the main benefits of AtMEP were assessing performance, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and learning from mistakes”.
CPD benefits
Teachers saw the main benefits being around CPD.
The report states: “Most practitioner comments on AtMEP’s potential benefits referenced teaching and learning and further staff development, particularly around the understanding of standards.”
However, there was some “frustration” among teachers that learners’ permission had to be sought in order to download papers. Sometimes this was because it was “impractical”, but it was also seen as an obstacle to improving “understanding of standards”.
The evaluation says that “workload concerns were largely not borne out” during the trial.
One teacher said it took them an average of 20 to 25 minutes per pupil to fulfil a request for access. But overall, just 36 per cent of respondents said the support learners required was substantial or very substantial; 39 per cent said administration associated with the trial was substantial or very substantial.
Nevertheless, the report says that: “Some respondents suggested that the workload had been manageable this year only because there were relatively few downloads.”
It says these respondents “expressed strong feelings that AtMEP being scaled up would incur considerably more work”.
Mr Booth said that, given that workload concerns had been raised, it was important that the SQA took “some time to work in partnership with others to deliver a service that addresses these concerns”.
He added, however, that the SQA remains “committed to the service”.
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