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A Review into Exam Results Issues Concerning the Scottish Qualifications Authority

3. BACKGROUND to ‘DIET 2000’

3.1 The Scottish Qualifications Authority

3.1.1 Origins

The SQA was formed in September 1997. It assumed the functions of the Scottish Examination Board (SEB) and the Scottish Vocational Education Council (SCOTVEC) on 1 April 1997, creating a single body with responsibility for managing the Scottish qualifications system below degree level.

3.1.2 Remit and Scope of Operations

With a remit covering a range of academic and vocational qualifications, including Standard Grade, Higher, Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (CSYS), the new National Qualifications (NQ) introduced under the Higher Still programme, workbased Scottish Vocational Qualifications, Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas, the SQA’s core client base consists of:

• schools;
• further education colleges; and
• employers and training providers.

Standard Grade and CSYS are essentially school qualifications, but the other qualifications are offered in both schools and further education colleges, and by trainers and employers. The qualifications affected by the exams or other external assessments included in the 2000 exam Diet are Standard Grade, SCE Highers, CSYS, the new Higher Still National Qualifications at Higher, Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2 levels.

The SQA has an annual turnover of over £27m and has around 550 full-time equivalent posts. Its qualifications are offered in approximately 1,200 Centres and taken by around 300,000 candidates each year.

SQA was responsible for implementing with other bodies, such as the Higher Still Development Unit (HSDU), the introduction of the new National Qualifications under the Higher Still programme. These are at five levels - Access, Intermediate 1 and 2, Higher and Advanced Higher, but Access courses have no external assessments and Advanced Highers will not be introduced until 2001/02.

Higher Still places a significantly greater emphasis on internal assessment than did the former Highers. In addition to the new Higher Still qualifications, Core Skills profile and a single Scottish Qualifications Certificate were introduced.

The development of a new computer system was undertaken in order to provide a single source for candidate records and to support the requirements of all qualifications and the SQA's wider business procedures. This Awards Processing System (APS) development was the focus of much management attention during 1998 and 1999.

A number of problems were encountered by the SQA during 1999/00 which resulted in delayed and missing certificates and incomplete and inaccurate results.

3.2 Diet 2000

3.2.1 Issues

Following wide-ranging consultations in 1995, the 2000 exam Diet was held later than in previous years, and over four weeks only (16 May —12 June). This was in response to teachers’ wishes to have more teaching time before external assessments (new Higher courses have a notional length of 160 hours compared with 120 hours for SCE Highers). The later dates for the exams meant that the time for marking each set of exams was reduced, from three weeks to two, and the number of scripts initially allocated to each marker was reduced accordingly. The exams for the new National Qualifications, and hence the length of the scripts, were shorter, however. Overall, this required an increase in the total number of markers from 6,275 in 1999 to an estimated requirement of 7,200 in 2000.

Data issues were raised in March 2000 when Centres complained of being asked to re-submit information that had already been sent to the SQA. In May, the Operations Unit of the SQA requested an additional 56 staff in order to cope with the heavier than expected data processing and error-resolution workload.

APS software was being delivered later than planned, which increased the pressure on and within the organisation.

The total number of markers required was estimated to be 7,200 but by the planned appointment date of 12 May, only an estimated 85% of markers had been recruited.

The SQA continued to request unit assessment and estimate data from Centres in an attempt to complete its records in time for certification.

3.2.2 Certification

On 4 August, the SQA informed the Scottish Executive that the current position was 4,800 missing unit results, affecting some 4,000 candidates in 310 Centres. The SQA also stated at that point that there were around 700 missing Standard Grade internal assessment results.

At a meeting with Scottish Executive staff on 6 August, the Chief Executive of the SQA stated that there was a 1% missing data problem. Based on this information, the SQA issued certificates on the planned date of 9 August.

147,000 candidates were due to be certificated on 9 August. Over 137,000 certificates were dispatched on time, and an additional 2,500 on 11 August. Over a thousand duplicate certificates were also issued on 9 August. The remainder of the certificates was placed on hold as it was known that data required to complete the outstanding certificates was missing.

Ultimately, the actual number of cases and candidates affected by incomplete or inaccurate data was found to be considerably higher than the SQA's estimate of 6 August.

3.2.3 Scale of Impact

The SQA has confirmed that 2.7% of results and 16,748 candidates were affected by missing or incomplete data. A total of 18,232 cases were found to be inaccurate. The split between qualifications in the year 2000 tranche of examinations - or Diet 2000 - is shown in the table below.

Source: SQA (9 October 2000)

The clear-up operation has been considerable and the revised data needs to be input to the SQA's computer system before candidates can be issued with revised certificates.

3.2.4 Appeals

The SQA expect to receive over 90,000 appeals this year, around twice the volume of previous years but with five times the volume of urgent appeals.

Urgent appeals, required for university and college entry this year, were dealt with first and results were issued by 20 September. The SQA has stated that other Higher and CSYS appeals will be finalised by 31 October and Intermediate 1 and 2 and Standard Grade appeals by mid-December.

As at 9 October, the SQA had processed 95% of Higher and CSYS appeals, and Standard Grade and Intermediate 1 and 2 appeals will be dealt with in November / December.

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