Higher Students Get Wrong Grades

It's emerged dozens of pupils were given the wrong grade in one of their Highers after an administration error.

A total of 34 students who sat the Higher in Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies were given the wrong marks after a human error when the data was entered into a computer.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) said the affected candidates took the paper at a "number of schools'' across the country and the grades had varied.

In a statement the SQA said, "Following contact by a school we've been reviewing the papers of the 3,804 candidates who sat the Higher Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies exam.

As a result of that review 34 candidates will be receiving upgrades and a personal apology from us.

The review showed that there had been an admin error when marks were input to the central system. It was a human admin error, not systemic.

If it's relevant for the 34 affected candidates we will be contacting the UCAS university admissions body.''

The statement continued, "This year we handled nearly two million exam papers from around 160,000 candidates. In an exercise of this scale human error can occur but we have processes in place to remedy errors as has happened in this case.

Nevertheless, this shouldn't have happened and we apologise to the candidates concerned.''