FOI26/27 178 Skills Classification and A Grade Discriminators, including Course specifications and Specimen Papers for Human Biology

Date published: 29/10/2026

FOI reference: FOI26/27 178

Date received: 01/10/2026

Date responded: 29/10/2026

Information requested

I was hoping you could provide the breakdown by key area, skills classification and A grade discriminators for the following courses between the years of 2014-2026 (including the recently released 2026 specimen papers) and the various course specifications for each courses over that time period as many of those are unavailable now. Biology: - National 5 - Higher - Advanced Higher Human Biology: - Higher Chemistry: - National 5 - Higher - Advanced Higher Physics: - National 5 - Higher - Advanced Higher

Response

We have been able to locate and/or generate most of the information you have requested and due to the volume of documents relating to the request, we have placed them on our disclosure log.

Under section 17 of the Act, where an authority does not hold information, it must inform the applicant.

Some information was never generated or published so we are unable to provide it.

Please see the tables attached for full information.

Question Paper Skills Tagging

There are no question papers or associated information for 2020 because exams were cancelled. What would have been the 2020 papers were released to centres in 2021 along with question paper skills tagging. Please be aware that for the 2021 papers any questions marked as an ‘A’ were intended to function as an ‘A’ because they were never actually sat by students. This also applies to the 2026 specimen papers which have not been sat by students. In other series items marked as an ‘A’, performed as an ‘A’ evidenced after the exam had been sat.

For physics in 2021 the information is embedded in separate PDF documents.

Course Specifications

There are 5 specifications that we have not been able to locate:

Higher Biology (C707 76), version 2.0. April 2014
Advanced Higher Chemistry (C713 76), version 1.0
Higher Physics (C757 76), version 2.0
Advanced Higher Physics (C757 76), version 1.0
Higher Chemistry (C813 76), version 1.0. Higher Chemistry version 2.0.

September 2018 is in the folder and the only difference to the missing version is that in 2.0, course support notes were added. So the content of 1.0 is all still in 2.0, unchanged.

Except for those 5 specifications all others are available. You will note that in some years there were no updated versions and so the last published version is the previous version. You will also see that in some cases there were multiple versions of updated specifications in the same year.