Letter from Fiona Robertson regarding 2020 - 2021 Appeals Statistics
I am writing to confirm that the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has today published statistics for its Appeals Service for the 2020-21 academic year. These statistics are now available on the SQA website and my Chief Examining Officer report provides further commentary.
As members of the Committee will know, for the first time this year, learners could appeal their results directly to SQA for free and were able to register that they wanted to appeal from Friday 25 June.
Every effort was made to ensure learners got the right results, first time. However, it was important that a free, direct right of appeal was made available to learners as the final essential part of the model.
The grounds of appeal were:
• Academic Judgement – where a learner disagreed with their school, college or training provider’s quality assured academic judgement in its assessment of the learner’s evidence.
• Unresolved Administrative Error – where a learner believed that there was an error in either transferring the provisional result from their school, college or training provider to SQA, or SQA processing the result.
• Discrimination – could be requested where there had been a breach of the Equality Act 2010 (which must have been either acknowledged by their school, college or training provider or established by a court or the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman), or their school, college or training provider failed to provide agreed Assessment Arrangements.
Appeals were processed with the support of schools, colleges and training providers after learners received their results in August.
Of the 519,429 entries in 2020–21, there were 3,483 requests for appeals on the grounds of academic judgement, unresolved administrative error or discrimination. This can further be refined as:
• 3,265 entries requested an appeal on the grounds of academic judgement.
• There were 30 appeals on the grounds of an unresolved administrative error.
• There were 188 appeals on the grounds of discrimination.
More than ninety three percent (93.7%) of all requests were for academic judgement. A smaller number of requests were for unresolved administrative errors (0.9%) and, discrimination (5.3%).
Today's published data shows that across the three available grounds, 1.6% resulted in a grade change (57 of 3,483 requests) – 44 upgrades and 13 downgrades. There are 15 appeals on the grounds of discrimination still being considered and which are not included in these figures.
I hope this information is helpful to the Committee. Yours sincerely