English - Reminder of changes to assessment conditions in writing portfolios
We’ve tightened the conditions of assessment in National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher English writing portfolios for session 2024-25 onwards, to further support teachers and lecturers with authenticating learners’ work and to ensure the reliability of the assessment.
What’s changing
Learners must now complete their first draft during class time, under the supervision of their teacher or lecturer. This is a mandatory requirement, and it will allow teachers and lecturers to review learners’ first drafts before learners continue to work on them independently. Learners will complete their final piece under some supervision and control, as is currently the case.
We haven’t made any other changes to the writing portfolios. The assessment standards remain the same.
Why we’ve made this change
We’ve received ongoing feedback from the English teaching profession that, under the previous portfolio assessment conditions, it could be difficult to verify learners’ work as their own. It’s possible that some learners may have had input from others when working on their draft outside of school or college hours.
More recently, we received feedback that it’s becoming more challenging to ensure that plagiarism hasn’t taken place in the portfolios, due to the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as Chat GPT and Google Bard.
We recognised that further support was needed for the English portfolios. The broad assessment conditions, which allowed learners to produce their draft outside of classroom hours, had the potential to enable outside input or the use of AI to go undetected.
Last session, SQA published its position on the use of generative AI in assessments, which is available on our Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in assessments web page. This position clearly states that learners are not allowed to submit AI outputs as their own work. Learners are also provided with information on plagiarism through our Your National Qualifications guide.
We published our guide Authenticating learners’ work – good practice advice for centres to support teachers and lecturers with ensuring learners’ work is their own. In addition, our National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher English course specifications advise steps that teachers and lecturers can take to authenticate learners’ writing portfolios, such as putting regular checkpoints in place and having progress meetings with learners.
How the tightened conditions will support teachers and lecturers
Introducing a mandatory requirement for learners to complete their first draft during class time will allow teachers and lecturers to observe how learners’ work is developing without any outside influences. This will help to identify if there are any unusual changes in the quality and content of a learner’s writing portfolio at the final submission stage, or if the final piece is unrecognisable from the first draft, which may indicate that it’s not the learner’s own work.
This will also protect the validity of the writing portfolio, which is an important feature of National 5 to Advanced Higher English course assessments. The writing portfolio allows learners to show their writing skills outside of a test or exam environment by following a writing process that takes them from initial ideas to a final draft.
We’ll keep the tightened assessment conditions under review as part of our ongoing maintenance of National Courses.
Together with our partners in the education community, we’re also continuing to monitor and explore developments in AI technology and keep our position under review.
Updated documents
We updated the course specifications and portfolio-writing coursework assessment tasks for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher English. The updated documents reflect the tightened conditions of assessment for the writing portfolios.
The updated documents are dated May 2024, and you can access them from our National 5 English web page, Higher English web page, and Advanced Higher English web page.
Contact us
If you have any questions about the above information, please email qualification.development@sqa.org.uk.