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.

No clue what they were thinking. They could've just done it on the Monday.

I am hoping that DD gets some clarity on her timetable at it though, as we still don't know how they're planning to teach her Higher music. She'll be with S4 for some lessons, but Higher courses have more lessons. There's also some random fillers in the timetable (RMPS, 2 PE/DofE/etc, a tutor session and another PSHE maybe). Hoping one of those might coincide with AH, so she can join them instead.

The more I think about it the more it feels unfair. As you say, it could have been done on Monday. DD still has no idea about her timetable and if she’ll get her options. They don’t use columns and timetabling does feel like witchcraft! She’s said H English, Maths, Biology, German and Chemistry. AH music is her reserve but she really wants to do that in S6. Her only concern is that they have only ever offered Human Biology before and if they don’t run the biology course she’d be in a right mess as she wants to do a related subject at uni. I’ve tried to reassure her it’ll be fine but who knows.

She crashed H music this year and she did both Nat5 and H theory classes to begin with. A huge amount of it was practise periods and it felt like very little was actually theory. The composition was done in school and at home. As she’s doing 5 Highers she only has two filler periods. One is PSE and the other is a free period. No other space as they do 6 periods per higher on a 32 period week.

It will also be frustrating for those who finished last week and who wanted to use a week that is otherwise free to go away on the holiday they were unable to take at Easter. For that reason I suspect there will be a lot of absences. We have a two hour induction session next week as the only activity for DD in school, if DS didn’t also have a biology exam I would have been sorely tempted to do this.

DD really struggling for motivation for Biology after a long gap too. Lucky if she's managing an hour a day. At least she has a few days off before S5 Starts, which is better than some have. No word on her new timetable either, so doesn't know if she's getting to do her choices.

@LaughingLemur It's so hard to keep them going for so long. DD also only did about an hour a day until the day before Modern. Can see same happening for Art, but at least it's only 20%. Nevertheless, a good mark versus scraping through is still a grade difference.

Maybe DD's school is not so disorganised, if several of you don't know what options your DC are doing yet. They have needed to completely change, as the county has moved to a common timetable, so that some courses can be shared. They've moved from 32 to 35 periods and the extra lessons in a week has thrown them somewhat, so now we have stupid decisions like compulsory RMPS in S5.

The timetable software hasn't done that well for DD's school. Lots of kids initially without H Maths and it has come up with some ridiculous subject clashes. Think it could do with some parameter tweaks, so the final timetable options relate to the combinations most needed for university. DD was one of the unlucky ones and could only do 3 of her 5 choices. The only Highers in the other two categories that she was doing at Nat 5, were Maths and Apps. Hence the odd music situation and the SCQF6. At least she dropped the idea of doing law a few years ago, so doesn't need 5 in one sitting.

@CleaningSilverCandlesticks I was annoyed for that very reason at first as I'd hoped for a short break after Art, but as it turns out, I couldn't have gone away this week, so saved me having to cancel.

Your DD is so unlucky @Issy422 not getting 2 of her choices. Most seem to get all of them or at least 4 out of 5. Hopefully it won't impact what she wants to do later. I can't believe they are having to do compulsory RMPS in S5. It's my day off tomorrow so looks like I'll be spending it gently encouraging some Biology revision. She got a B in her prelim and wants to do Higher next year, but she did so much more revision for her prelim, so could easily drop a grade.

Good luck to those doing Art and Health and Food Tech tomorrow 🤞🍀

DD2 in for Higher Art today and that’s us done, thankfully. Had a bit of a nightmare last week as my Dad’s health took a sudden decline on Thursday and he passed away in the early hours of Friday morning…the girls each missed an exam ( Higher Business on Thursday and Advanced Higher Modern Studies on Friday) whilst it was all going on so school are putting in exceptional circumstances requests…they both got As in prelims and on late evidence tests so fingers crossed… although DD1 is not reliant on the AH Mods for her uni offers and DD2 is not continuing with business so whatever the results it’s not then end of the world…

I’m so sorry to hear that TalkedTooMuchStayedTooLong It is good to hear you DC did well in their prelims so that wasn’t an extra stress at such an awful time. I hope art goes well today and that the funeral arrangements go smoothly. I imagine it is all feeling a bit unreal at the moment.

So sorry to hear that @TalkedTooMuchStayedTooLong . My thoughts are with you and family.

DD said Nat 5 Art was 'fine' and later 'meh' today.

Sorry to hear about your Father TalkedTooMuchStayedTooLong. Hope your DDs are doing okay too.

That's us finished. Higher Art was 'Ok' . Thinking of those who are still ploughing through it all. Particularly those who have RMPS on Friday. It used to be random things were on the last day such as Latin.

Roll on 11th August! DD signed up for the text and email alerts last night. Last year she only signed up for email alerts and got caught up in the blank email fiasco.

Good to hear it was ok.

Isn't results day 5th August?

That dd finished. We got a "meh it was OK" about Art, big improvement from the prelim! Kids here have to pick up their timetables during period 1 on Friday, dunno why they can't just whack them on showbie or teams.

Roll on 11th August! DD signed up for the text and email alerts last night. Last year she only signed up for email alerts and got caught up in the blank email fiasco.

Last year DS got the text; I woke early and tiptoed round the house waiting to hear DS results. He needed straight As for his uni choice so we were on tenterhooks. Eventually I knocked on his door at 9:30 wondering if I would find him in tears because he hadn’t appeared, only to discover he got his text at something like 7am, looked at it (the As he needed) and went straight back to sleep!

That’s Dd last exam done. And with school. Now have no children at school.
Onward to college and computing science for her in august providing she gets the other 2 C’s she needs.🤞

Said higher Art was fine. But she says that for every exam she’s had !

Nat 5 Biology for DD2 tomorrow, don’t feel like too much has been done in the way of revision. We shall see!
New timetable starting tomorrow apparently, think they were both hoping for a last week off!

N5 Bio for us too. And then final one on Fri.

We've just realised DD is away with friends on results day! Hoping she texts to let us know

DD wouldn't elaborate on 'meh' for Nat5 Art when she got home. Good to hear Higher art went well.

SQA website definitely says 5th for results.

Good luck to everyone doing Biology and Human Biology tomorrow 🍀🤞

That’s AH Biology done - a short text message that said It was alright but really hard and everyone thought so. Only 1 left to go Higher RMPS on Thursday. Then That. Is. It. Schools out forever 🙂

Nat 5 Biology went well. DD said that everyone in her room left really early and she was on her own for the last 30mins, but didn't dare leave in case she thought of something she'd answered wrong. That's her exams finished and she's planning to sleep for the next few days. I'm sure there will be the inevitable drama when the new timetable finally appears. Good luck to everyone who still has exams.

We are done and dusted with exams now too. DS done with school and DD away to start S5 next week. DS has a range of things lined up though starting with a day trip with friends on Friday.

That's it, we are done. Hurrah! N5 Biology appears to have had a tough Qu or two, but Dd hopes to have done well. At least got there on time. Our school started the exam at 1, but forgot to inform students (we knew as Dd has special arrangements). Chaos!

Great to hear Biology seems to have gone ok/well for everyone.

Good luck to those doing Mandarin, Cantonese, Environmental Science, Statistics and Classical Studies tomorrow. 🍀🤞

Also I'm working very late tomorrow, so good luck for Thursday for those doing Italian, Latin, ESOL and Fashion & Textile Tech.

Nat 5 Biology seems to have been fine here too. I hope everyone who still has an exam is managing to keep going.

Invigilated Nat 5 Biology yesterday and despite not even having done Biology at standard grade back in the day, could have had a go at a fair bit of the paper, it's quite maths-y isn't it? Well, data interpretation, looking at numbers of people with diabetes and predicting how that trend will continue, being told 23 is 5% of something and being asked to find the total, drawing a pie chart of nutritional information from the numbers given. Yes there was "proper" biology about cell structure, genetics, photosynthesis, but I was quite surprised.

Anyway. That's my invigilating over for 2025, may go back in 2026 we shall see. DS still has H RMPS on Friday.