Students need to take more care over their handwriting, and proof- read keyed-in work to improve their marks.

“Extremely difficult to read” handwriting was a serious problem among Higher candidates in the administration exams. Markers commented that “very poor writing skills” were exhibited by a high number of candidates, and schools should consider using transcription to get around this problem.

Even the typed Paper 2 answers were difficult to understand, because of the poor standard of word processing and copy typing. However, the paper was, in general, completed to a higher standard than in previous years and, as a rule, fewer questions were left unanswered.

At Intermediate 1, problems were created by incomplete print-outs from students who had not read or fully understood the instructions for submitting results of their work; for example, by not including formula print-outs of a spreadsheet.