The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has been accused of attempting to block teacher criticism of its “negative culture” and brushing aside history teachers’ concerns about the way the subject is assessed for years.
Today, representatives from the Scottish Association of Teachers of History (SATH) - all practising teachers - told MSPs on the Scottish Parliament Education, Children and Young People Committee that it was time for a “major review” of Higher history.
They said concerns about the course predated not just the recent drop in the A-C pass rate - which fell by 13 percentage points in 2024 - but also the Covid pandemic.
Exam issues ‘brushed under the carpet or worse’
History teacher and former SATH president Rebecca Hanna said issues with exam papers had been raised “going back to 2019”, but had been “brushed under the carpet or worse”.
She stopped short of claiming teachers had been “silenced” by the SQA, saying that sounded “very dramatic”.
However, she said that when problems had been raised they had been dealt with “in a very damaging way for relationships between history teachers and the SQA”.
The history teachers said the drop in the pass rate in 2024 - which an SQA review concluded was due to a weaker student cohort - had led to Advanced Higher classes “collapsing” and students having to repeat the Higher course. Ms Hanna said 26 per cent of the Higher history cohort failed the 2024 exam in her council area, compared with 11 per cent the previous year.
Ms Hanna said: “We can see that our pupils have done worse in Higher history than they have in other subjects that they are taking. I would like to understand why it is only history that had been affected.”
The poor results had a huge impact on staff, teachers said.
SATH president Kirsty MacDonald said the body’s survey results showed history teachers were “anxious”, “angry”, suffering from low morale and lacking in confidence. Some were even contemplating leaving the profession, because “they don’t feel they can do the right thing by their learners”.
She predicted that the “bad feeling towards the SQA” could lead to a lack of markers this year - and an increase in inexperienced markers.
Andy Johnston, a history teacher and SATH member who was also giving evidence, said he had lost count of the number of times he had told pupils this year he was not sure of “the exact standard”.
“We look incompetent at times,” he said
Meanwhile, events organised by the SQA with a view to improving confidence and providing clarification on the Higher history standard, were criticised.
The teachers described the extra “understanding standards” events they had attended as “chaotic” and “pandemonium”. SQA team leaders talked over each other and cut each other off mid-sentence, and key questions went unanswered, they said.
Call for ‘major review’ of Higher history
Ms MacDonald said: “We are at a point where I think that it is really important there is some kind of a major review of what this course [Higher history] looks like.”
She said it was necessary to restore confidence in the subject and the exam, adding: “I don’t want people steering young people away from history because they feel that it’s not going to be accessible for them.”
Reform of the SQA is under way, with the body due to be replaced later this year.
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth - who, in December, backed the SQA review of Higher history - has said the new body, Qualifications Scotland, must feel “less defensive” and put teachers’ and students’ views “at its heart”.
However, the three SATH members giving evidence painted a picture of an organisation that remains unwilling to listen; a case in point was an ongoing dispute over a SATH survey.
The SQA was asking for 13 critical comments to be removed from the survey report, SATH said.
Ms MacDonald said the SQA had even suggested SATH seek legal advice after it accidentally left the name of an SQA employee in a comment. She said this had generated “a little bit of fear” and put it under pressure to comply.
“Obviously as a small volunteer association we don’t have lawyers,” she said.
The comments she had been asked to “redact”, she said, were “typically those types of comments which are saying that there is a culture problem [at the SQA], using words like ‘toxic’”.
She added: “It’s concerning to me that those are the comments that we are being asked to remove because, if indeed there is a problem with the culture, then that seems to reinforce that rather than challenge that. You need to allow those comments to be made, and then you need to prove them wrong, not simply remove them from the record.”
The witnesses said SATH had also been asked by the SQA to withdraw a previous survey conducted in 2020. Ms Hanna, who was president at the time, said she had agreed not to publish it but regretted the decision.
Concerns over ‘tension’ between history teachers and the SQA
Ms Hanna said she was worried about creating “tension” between history teachers and the SQA and also felt her position as a Higher history marker was at risk.
She had heard of the SQA contacting headteachers to ask that teachers be “disciplined for voicing concerns”, as well as markers being “fired” if they questioned standards.
The history teachers’ feedback was described at the end of the session as “damning” by Conservative MSP and committee convener Douglas Ross.
In a media release issued after the meeting, he said the committee urgently needed to hear the SQA’s responses to the issues raised. He said the body had been called on to appear.
Commenting on the SATH evidence to the committee, an SQA spokesperson said it had “not at any stage raised the prospect of taking legal action” over the SATH survey and it did “not intend to take legal action”.
The spokesperson said the SQA had asked SATH to anonymise the results of its survey because that was “usual practice” and it takes its duty of care to employees “very seriously”.
The spokesperson said it was “a matter for subject associations to decide how they engage with their members” and the SQA would “look into the suggestion that a 2020 SATH survey was withdrawn at the request of SQA staff”.
Other points, the spokesperson said, would be followed up with the committee convener.
“SQA remains committed to working with SATH and to supporting teachers and learners as they prepare for their exams this year,” they concluded.
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