Scheduled revisions

Qualifications Scotland publishes attainment statistics on results day in August every year. While these are provisional figures of national attainment, they can be a useful early indication of trends. We publish a revised summary of national attainment every December, once post-results services and procedures - including appeals and malpractice - are complete.

We mark August data as ‘provisional’ so that the people using them are aware the data will change in December. It is important to make the distinction so that people don’t mix provisional and final attainment statistics.

Additional revisions

As well as the December revisions, we sometimes revise data when we change the methods or systems to improve statistical accuracy. We schedule these revisions according to priority and let users know through our website.

Occasionally, we might discover something that needs to be revised immediately. If we do, we let people know as soon as possible through our website.

When we revise data, we:

• clearly mark whether our published statistics are based on provisional or final data (our schedule sets out publication dates up to a year in advance, but with a minimum four weeks’ notice)

• give clear notice of additional revisions, and detail the reasons for them and likely impacts, as appropriate

• consult users before making any changes that would affect statistics or publications (for example, methodology changes) where possible

• produce consistent historical data to ensure robustness, and avoid breaking any published time series, where feasible, in cases of revisions to methodology, coverage, or data

If it’s feasible and appropriate, we’ll consider archiving and replacing previous versions of publications, and data tables containing unrevised figures. At a minimum, we clearly mark unrevised figures, and include a link to the revised figures.