On 1 February 2026, Qualifications Scotland replaced SQA and became Scotland’s new national awarding body. The documents on this page remain current and you can continue to use them. We’ll update them in the style of Qualifications Scotland when they’re next due for review.

We’ve increased the duration of the Higher English Critical Reading exam by 15 minutes – from 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes.

The new exam time is included in the 2026 exam timetable.

Why we’ve made this change

We’ve made this change following feedback from our survey in June 2025, where we asked teachers, lecturers and learners for their views on whether we should increase the duration of the Higher Critical Reading exam. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

We’ve been receiving feedback on the duration of the exam over the last few years, including through our consultation on the Scottish set text list in 2024.

The extra time will help learners to fully demonstrate their skills, knowledge and understanding. There are no changes to the content of the question paper.

Updated documents

We recently updated the Higher English course specification and Critical Reading specimen question paper to include the new duration of 1 hour and 45 minutes.