Do Scottish Secondary schools have to offer a full range of SQA qualification levels every year in senior phase in ALL subjects

[Tabbygirl1]

Hello everyone. Does anyone know if secondary schools should offer the full range of SQA levels in ALL subjects every year please? My daughter is going into S5 and her school have decided not to offer Nat 5 in either History or Geography but will be running Highers and Advanced in both these subjects. She was told during the last 2 years by her class teachers not to worry about Nat 5 in S4 due to her dyslexia and that she could take Nat 5 in S5. Additionally we were told by both the History and Geography teachers at Parents Evening earlier this year that studying for her Nat 5 in S5 was possible. This is going to severely waylay her plans to go into Uni for History after S6 with no certainty that they will offer Nat 5 in History when she reaches S6. The entry requirements for UNI for History but I cannot seem to find any Uni that runs a Nat 5 course in History. I wasn't sure if either Education Scotland or SQA set out guidelines for schools on which qualification levels they should offer. Considering lodging a formal complaint but wanted to gather information first. Thank you if you have any knowledge of the requirements.

No I don't believe they do. Reduced offerings are usually to do with lack of teachers in those subjects unfortunately.

It would be physically impossible for schools to run all levels for all SQA qualifications. They run what they can manage and what they think best serves the school as a whole. It's not just lack of teachers, it's also timetable space and classroom availability. Schools are allocated staffing based on enrolment and have to make it work with how many teachers they can afford to hire, it's not based on how many subjects they 'should' be offering. They can't run every level of every subject, there literally isn't money, space or teachers to do that.

No formal or legal requirement to offer N5 in S5 (except in English and Maths). Worth noting that even if you put in a formal complaint and they did put the course on, as it does not correlate to H or AH (the N5 and H courses are completely different) then it's highly likely your DC will be given a textbook and sat at the back of a Higher class and told to self-study under 'teacher guidance' - ie a teacher will check in on them every so often but not actually teach them. This happens in every school I've taught in to appease the parents because the school can't staff a subject/level but also don't want to ignore the parental complaint. In my opinion it is a terrible compromise and the pupils never do well but there really isn't anything else the school can do.

Do the teachers know that’s her ambition for uni? Are you in an urban area with other nearby schools? In my city it’s relatively common for children to travel to a neighbouring school if their subject can’t be offered.

Dont we wish!

Subject choices are universally bad.

Most DCs are having to compromise.

But history at uni can easily be done without having done it at school as long as she's done other arts/social science type subjects. Eg English, Modern Studies, Classics, Philosophy, Geography.

My son got to go to a different high school in the town to do French when his school were only offering German