2025 SQA Exams

[Issy422]

With SQA exams starting tomorrow, is it time for a general exam thread?

It's just DD for me, doing Nat 5s. My first 'anxious parent for formal exams' experience. Starts with Music on Monday and ends with Art & Design on 26th, so we've exams throughout. Study leave not started here so first exam is on first day of study leave. She's over revision already so going to be a long 5 weeks.

I asked DD, but she's not aware of anything and just uses her teacher's PowerPoints. I've heard Achieve is good generally, but haven't seen it. DD was using it for D&M. Bitesize used a lot here too.

Oops, wrong quote, sorry!

Good to hear Spanish went well today. Bon courage for those doing French tomorrow 🇫🇷 and good luck to those doing dance and practical metalwork 🤞🍀.

Tomorrow I have a work meeting in the evening so apologies in advance if I forget the nightly good luck message.

AH French for DD1 today… relevant for the conditional offer for her first choice uni so 🤞it goes well…

@cazzygQuizlet & Blookit are popular here alongside BBC Bitesize…

Oh my goodness what a week! I hope it goes well!

Final few days now.

Study today and tomorrow. nat 5 BM Thursday then Modern Friday. just booked for 5 nights in Spain next week. DS can then relax before going back on 2nd the start Highers (fingers crossed passes N5s so can actually move onto highers of course)

French seems to have gone ok! Onto higher moddies....

Higher French seems to have gone ok for DC today . That’s him finished. . Good luck to all of those that still have DC sitting exams . Seems such a long wait until the results come out on 5 August .

French seemed to go well here. Just Biology left and it's a whole week away, so DD is having a day off tomorrow.

Good to hear that French went well today.

Good luck to those doing ESOL, Philosophy and Practical Cookery tomorrow. 🤞🍀

AH French mostly ok… DD wasn’t impressed with discursive essay topic choices but thought rest was fine…

Higher Philosophy today. DS said 2nd paper very different to past papers and how they’ve been taught and that the whole class was scratching their heads about how to answer parts of it. This is what really annoys me, if feels as if they way they are taught provides for no resilience or ability to cope with papers that deviate from a perceived formula. I don’t blame the teachers, more the system. It seems so different from how I was taught. He was confident that his first paper is A standard, but no confidence in an A grade now.

One more subject to go for us!

Final exam tomorrow—higher business. I’ll be so glad to have it all done. This is the third year of exams and will have DD2 next year. Best wishes to everyone still revising.

DD1 also say Philosophy today and said paper 2 was ‘weird’ not what she was expecting.
Also predicted an ‘A’ but not confident of that at all now!

I got a bit more detail later @gracielooloo - apparently there was something about a question that was unusual and another about something they hadn’t been taught and that schools weren’t expecting to come because of information provided by the SQA. DS friend parent is a teacher, with teacher friends at other schools, and reports from at least two other (both good schools, one private) school about it being an odd paper and agreeing on unexpected content. I’ve had all this second hand from DS so who knows, but let’s hope it is reflected in the grade boundaries. I’ll be upset for DS if he doesn’t get his A, after finding the course a bit tough in the beginning, he’s really worked hard and been consistently getting A’s since, and including his prelim. He said the first paper went really well.

Yes @WhatWouldTheDoctorDo that’s more or less what DD said their teacher said, fingers crossed for them both!
Thank goodness only Higher and Nat 5 mods and Nat 5 Biology left, I’ve found this more stressful than I expected. Not looking forward to next year with Highers and Advanced Highers.

Sorry to hear that Philosophy was a tough paper.

Good luck to those doing Business Management, Gaelic and Politics tomorrow🤞🍀.

DS doing higher Business this afternoon and I'm invigilating it too (in a different school). He is sure the case study is going to be third sector or not for profit - we'll see!

DD2 sitting Higher Business Management this afternoon too… with her extra time (dyslexia) she doesn’t finish until almost 5 so will be exhausted tonight…

DD texted at 5 to say the business exam is running late. The school messed up her special arrangements for dyslexia in the last exam. I’ll be raging if they’ve done it again. I can’t think of any other reason why it would be running late. And she’s obviously had access to her phone.

DS thought the H Business paper was fair. Case study on Pets at Home which is fairly relatable, nothing in the other part of hte paper which was "weird".

Are you sure it was her texting? It seems odd that she should have her phone on her - they are very strict about that.

It was definitely her. In her last exam they messed up the computer set up for her dyslexia. She was waiting for 2.5 hours for them to sort it so she could sit the exam. They allowed her to send me a quick text during that time. I can only guess that the same thing has happened.

Hmm, unless the teacher sent the text from
her phone for her . Either way, the exam was due to finish two hours ago.

I would put in an EECCS request for exams starting over two hours late - that is a long time to be waiting around getting stressed. Plus it means you have a long time without anything to eat unless you take a snack in with you. I also used to have certain things I would commit to my shorter term memory just before going into exams and waiting a couple of hours would mean I likely lost them.

Good to hear that business management seems to have gone well for most.

@Ineedcoffeenow I hope DD was ok and got the help she needed without too much delay.

Good luck for everyone doing Modern Studies tomorrow, which includes my DD. 🍀🤞