Purpose

The Assessment Arrangements publication presents a summary of assessment arrangements requested for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher courses.

Status

These data are classified as official statistics in development.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code. You can also email us with your comments on how we’re meeting these standards, or you can contact OSR by email at regulation@statistics.gov.uk, or through the OSR website.

Description

This publication details data captured from assessment arrangement requests for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher assessments for an academic year (for example, 2026 covers the academic year from 2025 to 2026) and includes data for previous years (nominally 4 years, where available). Further information about assessment arrangements and the system and process for requesting them is available on our website.

Assessment arrangements allow candidates who are disabled, and/or have been identified as having additional support needs, access to appropriate arrangements to complete the assessment without compromising its integrity.

Source of data

These figures are derived from Qualifications Scotland operational data.

Methodology

Duplicate request information is removed as well as withdrawn requests.

Counts of assessment arrangements are based on the candidate record by subject and level. For example, a candidate with requests relating to both National 5 and Higher Mathematics qualifications will be counted once in the National 5 requests and once in the Higher requests table.

For each request, multiple assessment arrangements categories can be requested; each arrangement type requested is counted based on whether the associated data is present or missing.

The breakdown by centre type shows Education Authority - Secondary School, Education Authority - Special School, Independent - Secondary School, Independent - Special School and FE College. All remaining centre types, including training providers, voluntary sector organisations, HM Armed Forces, prisons and primary schools are reported as ‘Other’.

The breakdown by sex includes Female and Male.

The breakdown by Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) includes those with a postcode matching SIMD quintile postcode data.

Confidentiality and rounding

All figures are rounded to the nearest five. Figures between one and four inclusive have been suppressed to protect against the risk of disclosure of personal information. Cells containing suppressed figures are marked up with the shorthand [c].

Totals are calculated using figures prior to rounding; the sum of rounded figures may differ from the total reported.

Limitations

External assessments did not take place in 2020 and 2021 due to disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, assessment arrangement data for these years are not available.

Assessments were subject to different approaches to awarding in place in the five year period covered. The different awarding approaches may have had an effect on assessment arrangements requested. This means that it is not possible to compare statistics across these years without full consideration of this contextual information. Approaches to awarding are outlined in the methodology reports linked in the attainment statistics background information webpage.

For assessment arrangement requests which include free-text responses under ‘Any other arrangements’, a count of one arrangement is recorded for every request with a response. In some cases, the free text may list more than one arrangement but are always counted as one ‘any other arrangement’ request.

Centres often submit multiple assessment arrangements within each subject/level request but also include contingency arrangements. We do not hold information on whether (and which) assessments arrangements requested are actually used when assessments take place.

Finally, requests for assessment arrangements are made at the subject level rather than at component level. For example, a request for coloured paper in a Higher modern language qualification may be used for any (or all) of the components that involve a written assessment (‘exam paper’) but would be unlikely to be required for a speaking assessment component.

Information governance

The data in this publication is defined as being statistical for the purposes of information governance and data protection. This primarily means that the associated processing is not carried out for the purposes of measures or decisions with respect to a particular data subject. Further information on this processing category can be found in the appropriate data protection legislation.

Revisions and corrections

Assessment arrangements data were revised in 2026, with a historic series for 2018 and 2019 produced alongside.

We improved the methodology by producing statistics on assessment arrangements for candidates who were entered for the matching National Qualifications assessment from Table 2 onwards. Ofqual made a similar change in 2025.

Additionally, to be consistent in how we present our other official statistics information, we produced additional statistics such as:

  • the mean number of assessment arrangements requested

  • separate tables that break down information by sex, centre type, education authority and SIMD

We will continue to assess the methodology used for the production of the publication as we develop the statistics further.

Further information about revisions and corrections is available in our policy document.

Help us improve

We want to make our publications as useful as possible. Please let our team know using data.analytics@qualifications.gov.scot about anything that has worked particularly well for you, that you’d like us to improve, or any suggestions for future developments.