Appealing Highers

[Advocado]

Wondering if anyone’s DC is appealing any Higher results? I am not very familiar with the process and it won’t be clear until my DC returns to school if they will be a candidate, but would be interested in other people’s experiences.
I’ve picked up that an appeal may only be worth it if there is a mark or two in it. For my DC it’s a ‘D’ result in question and won’t affect their current uni hopes, so there’s a bit of a ‘nothing to lose’ if they could benefit from a mark that moves it up to a C. DC’s school isn’t great but we are expecting they will flag the possibility of appeals to kids whose marks are borderline.

Her own school should know too.

His chemistry teacher discouraged him from appealing. I suggested appealing as he had nothing to lose. His teacher said he's so unlikely to be upgraded because he's too far away from the next grade. But no, my gut instinct was right to appeal. Sometimes you just know...

I agree, it quite possibly was an admin error on the marker's part.

Higher English appeal has been successful and DD now has an A! I’m so glad her teacher was on the ball with this, DD did really well in the exam but her portfolio was marked low. Seems this happened with a lot of young people.

I haven’t heard anything for the other subject yet (Graphics).

Great news for your DD Still waiting here. Nothing showing on SQA appeals site and nothing from the school either

I’m assuming she was told by her teachers, she said there’s no change to Graphics but a B is still really good. Hope you hear soon 🤞

My daughter successfully appealed Higher English and has been awarded an A too! She wasn’t told directly, but school sent a letter by email to me. She was only one mark away from an A, so in her case it was worth doing.

Ah I wish my son had appealed his C in English now. He was one mark off a B but his folio was a good mark, it was his RUAE that let him down.

My elder son did get an A in higher English in 2023 but his folio mark was really low, his teacher had predicted between 28 and 30 out of 30 and he got 18! He was raging as it dropped him to a band 2.

Ds got an A in his higher English, school thought his portfolio was marked low so requested the appeal, he is delighted.

Not good news for us, neither biology nor chemistry appeals were successful :(

I am sorry to hear this. You did the best thing as a parent and tried to appeal for the two Highers.

Bit late to the party on this one but please consider

• a mark/two marks off isn’t the case. Must subjects scale their marks so it is more than a case of a couple of marks
• you cannot pay for a remark. An appeal is a clerical check. Exams are marked by teachers, the subject groups handle appeals. They cannot remark all papers being appealed
• grades can go up, down or stay the same
• non priority appeals were concluded a week or so before the October hols

You can be a mark off the next grade. There has to be a cut off somewhere and that will be between two marks.

You don’t quite get what I’ve said, or maybe I’ve not communicated it clearly enough. In my subject, exam and coursework add up to 120 marks. The SQA then scale this to 135. So what looks like a mark off in the written paper is actually more….

Except it isn’t. There is still a point where one mark more moves you to a higher grade, even if each mark is equivalent to 1.125 in the scaled score,

Really not interested in debating this. Appeals are done with for this year. I shared info to help in future years. TTFN!!

As you pointed out, appeals are over for this year. Things might change next year.

DS was an A4 sheet of answers off an upgrade but he was successful. His teacher couldn't believe it. It seemed impossible. I think whoever originally marked it got so fed up trying to decipher his handwriting (dysgraphia) that they just gave him zero marks for that part of the paper. A fresh pair of eyes helped turn things around for him in the appeal process. It can and does happen even if highly unusual.

Always have courage in your convictions.

If his handwriting is that bad his school should have transcribed his paper, or requested it was marked by a senior examiner. Maybe get them to do that if he is taking exams this year.

He had ICT support for all subjects except this one as he had to do equations and he refused a scribe (I did try). He has now left school with all subjects passed at AH and H level and enjoying higher education. It all turned out well for him. He was incredibly lucky.

We submitted an appeal for my son ourselves for higher chem. Had not heard anything from school or sqa and so were not aware appeals had come back, have been on hol for last 2 weeks. My son logged on to sqa appeals yesterday and its showing as withdrawn. We did not withdraw the appeal, does anyone know if the school can do this without our knowledge? Thanks