2026 National Qualifications Awarding:

Equalities Monitoring Report - Background and Context

Qualifications Scotland considers the equality impacts of its activities both as a strategic objective and as a statutory duty.

This report does not repeat considerations recorded in our equality impact assessments (EqIAs). Instead, the report describes the outcomes of this year‘s awarding process from an equality perspective. The descriptive analyses of attainment by specific equality characteristic can be found in the Equalities Monitoring Report - Analytical Report.

This report should be read alongside our other Results Day publications, including the official statistics on national attainment. This report supplements those publications by showing how this year’s results are distributed among groups of learners who share particular characteristics. This report does not seek to explain the distribution of results or attribute that distribution to particular causes.

About Qualifications Scotland

Qualifications Scotland is an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB). We carry out administrative, commercial, executive and accreditation functions on behalf of the Scottish Government. As an NDPB, we are responsible for making our own operational decisions.

The Education (Scotland) Act 2025 sets out our statutory functions, including awarding, quality assuring and accrediting qualifications.

Qualifications Scotland is Scotland’s statutory awarding body. We develop, validate, quality assure and award a national framework of qualifications. We also have statutory duties under the Equality Act 2010 in our roles as regulator and awarding body for National Qualifications.

Under section 96(7) of the Equality Act 2010, we may, as the appropriate regulator of general qualifications in Scotland, specify provisions, criteria or practices relating to decisions about reasonable adjustments. We must also publish details of any reasonable adjustments that should not be made to National Qualifications.

Reasonable adjustments are steps taken to prevent a disabled person from being placed at a disadvantage. Section 96 of the Equality Act 2010 covers the following general qualifications in Scotland:

  • National Courses (National 1 to National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher)
  • Scottish Baccalaureates
  • Skills for Work Courses
  • non-vocational awards

As an awarding body, we work with schools, colleges, universities, employers and government to ensure that qualifications:

  • are inclusive and accessible to all
  • recognise learners’ achievements
  • provide clear routes to further learning or employment

We maintain a broad portfolio of qualifications, including National Courses, Vocational Qualifications, National Progression Awards, National Certificates, Professional Development Awards and other specialised awards. We also have a proud history of developing Higher National Certificates and Higher National Diplomas, which are equivalent to the first and second years of Scottish university degree programmes.

National Qualifications awarding in 2026

Following a consultation on removing question papers from practical subjects, most teaching practitioners who responded agreed that the exam component should be removed from the following courses:

  • National 5 Practical Cake Craft
  • National 5 Practical Metalworking
  • National 5 Practical Woodworking

We implemented this change and updated the course specification documents for the 2025 to 2026 session. The full findings are available on the ‘Rebalancing assessment’ page of our website.

In response to stakeholder feedback, the Higher English Qualifications Development Team added 15 minutes to the Higher English Critical Reading question paper for 2026. This increased the duration from 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes, giving learners more time to demonstrate their skills, knowledge and understanding. Further information, including the research report, is available on the ‘Higher English Critical Reading question paper research’ page of our website.

We also updated our Exam Exceptional Circumstances Consideration Service (EECCS) policy for 2026. Under the updated policy, learners may be eligible for this service if they sit exams totalling 6 hours or more in one day and due to exceptional circumstances, they were unable to sit one or more exams on the day, or the total exam time affected their performance. The 6-hour total does not include scheduled breaks between exams.

We expected the change to the EECCS policy to benefit disabled learners and learners with additional support needs who receive extra time as an assessment arrangement.

Our standard assessment and awarding procedures remain in place for the 2026 exam diet.

Our equalities obligations

Obligations under the Equalities Act

Section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010 requires Qualifications Scotland to have due regard to several needs. These include advancing equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not.

Our Equality of Access to Qualifications policy outlines our commitment to promoting and facilitating access to our qualifications. In practice, we take every reasonable step to:

  • produce qualifications based on national standards, which are as accessible as possible. We review qualifications to identify any impacts on learners who share particular characteristics. We seek to remove unnecessary barriers where possible, or minimise them when we cannot remove them altogether
  • develop assessment and quality assurance methods that are sensitive to the needs of all learners without compromising our overarching aims of fairness and consistency
  • consider requests for assessment arrangements to allow disabled learners and learners with additional support needs to access the assessment without compromising its integrity. For disabled learners, this includes making reasonable adjustments in accordance with the requirements of section 96(7) of the Equality Act 2010

The Equality of Access to Qualifications Policy is available on the ‘Policies for Qualifications Scotland centres’ page of our website.

Public Sector Equality Duty

The Public Sector Equality Duty requires us to have due regard to the need to:

  • eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010
  • advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not
  • foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not

We take several steps to meet our Public Sector Equality Duty. These steps include working with schools, colleges, universities, industry and government to ensure that qualifications, including National Courses:

  • are inclusive and accessible to all
  • recognise learners’ achievements
  • enable progression to further learning or employment

Qualifications Scotland Awarding Body Code of Practice

The Qualifications Scotland Awarding Body Code of Practice guides our approach to ensuring that our qualifications are high quality and fit for purpose, and that the assessment of these qualifications is monitored and maintained to a consistently high standard. The code sets the framework we use to safeguard the integrity of our qualifications and assessment standards and ensure public confidence.

The code is based on 13 Governing Principles. These govern how we meet our statutory duties and regulate our activities. They also apply to our qualifications that other organisations regulate.

Governing Principle 7 states:

‘Qualifications Scotland will ensure that all qualifications and assessments are as fair and accessible as possible and that the needs of candidates are met in the administration of its assessments.’

Equality considerations

As part of developing our awarding approach, we completed EqIAs and Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments (CRWIAs) on the Awarding and Grading, EECCS, and Appeals policies. The aim was to identify and mitigate any potential impacts of the awarding approach on one or more groups of learners with protected characteristics. The EqIAs and CRWIAs considered and acted on key equality evidence throughout the development and review of these policies. The published EqIAs are available on the ‘Equality impact assessments’ page of our website.

In addition to completing equality impact assessments, we have clear duties under the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that we do not discriminate against learners or potential learners because of a protected characteristic (age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation).

We developed the Equality Review of Qualifications process to ensure that we uphold these duties. Further information about this process is available on the ‘Equality and our qualifications’ page of our website.