The Intermediate 2 paper for information systems was, if anything, a better exam than last year’s, felt Alan Dunnet, principal teaching of computing at Banff Academy.

Both papers - the core and options - were “fair and straightforward” with a sufficient degree of differentiation to test pupils.

Candidates have to choose one of three options in the second paper - applied multi-media, the internet, and expert systems. Mr Dunnet does not teach “expert systems” as an option, so could not comment on that; the others, however, he deemed “reasonable”.

This year’s Higher paper was again uneven in the relative difficulty of the questions in the options paper, he thought. “The difficulty level seems to go up and down - it depends on how lucky you were in what you were taught. I thought the internet unit question was easier than the multi-media one this year,” he said.