National 5 Practical Cake Craft

What’s changing

From session 2025-26, we’re removing the question paper from the National 5 Practical Cake Craft course.

With the question paper removed, we’re adding a section to the assignment for learners to explain the processes and techniques they’ve used to produce and finish their cake in the linked practical activity. This will ensure learners continue to be assessed on their knowledge and understanding of the theory involved, but in a practical setting where they can relate it to their own work. 

The assignment will continue to be worth 30 marks. We’ve reviewed and updated the marking instructions, and the distribution of marks. The updated marking instructions recognise learners’ ability to extend and apply their skills in the context of baking and finishing a cake to a given design brief. The combined assignment and practical activity will now have four stages:

•  Stage 1: designing (assignment, section 1) – 17 marks
•  Stage 2: implementing (practical activity) – 70 marks
•  Stage 3: demonstrating knowledge and understanding (assignment, section 2) – 8 marks
•  Stage 4: evaluating (assignment, section 3) – 5 marks

Stages 3 and 4 will be closed book, and learners must complete them at the same time, under direct supervision. Learners will have a maximum of 1 hour to complete both stages.

Why we’re making these changes

We’re making these changes in response to feedback from teachers and lecturers, gathered during research we conducted in 2024 to explore whether we should remove question papers from practical courses. This is a first step towards reviewing the balance of assessment approaches across National Qualifications.  

View our online news article - SQA rebalancing assessment for practical qualifications  (20 March 2025)

Updated documents for 2025-26 onwards

We’ve updated the National 5 Practical Cake Craft course specification and coursework assessment task to reflect these changes.

We’ve also updated the candidate workbooks and split them into ‘stages 1 and 2’ and ‘stages 3 and 4’, to reflect that stages 3 and 4 are closed book. The workbooks are available in Word, PDF and Google Docs formats. You need to send both workbooks together when submitting them to us for marking. 

We’ve also published a new assignment submission instructions document, which provides a checklist for submitting learners’ completed workbooks. 

These documents are available from the ‘course specification’ and ‘coursework’ tabs, below, alongside the current documents for session 2024-25.

New course code

We’ll issue a new course code for National 5 Practical Cake Craft in May. You'll need this code to enter learners for the course in session 2025-26 onwards. 

We’re running an Understanding Standards event for National 5 Practical Cake Craft on Wednesday 1 October 2025 from 10am to 3pm.

The event will take place at SQA’s Glasgow office, with an option to join online for those unable to travel.

What the event will cover

It will support you with changes to the National 5 course assessment, following the removal of the question paper.

Book a place

Places are limited to one representative from each school, college or training provider.

To book on to this event, please use our online booking system at athena.sqameet.net. You’ll need a username and password to access the booking system.

Once you book a place, our Events team will contact you to confirm if you’re planning to attend in person or online.

You can view our full programme of Understanding Standards events and webinars at www.understandingstandards.org.uk