Teachers reproach students as 14,000 sign petition claiming maths exam overly challenging

Teachers have defended a difficult maths exam after more than 14,000 pupils signed a petition calling it “poorly worded, inconsistently structured and out of step with every previous paper”.

Pupil complaints

Students who sat the recent Higher Maths paper described it as “unrecognisable” from the exams they had prepared for in class. A petition launched in response gathered thousands of signatures, with signatories claiming the paper bore little resemblance to past papers and used unfamiliar phrasing.

Arran Bauer, a 16-year-old from Stirling, said he had to “stare at the question for a while to figure out what was going on”. He added: “There were quite a few questions within there that were not standard practice.” He noted that the language used was “not routine to the modern day higher”.

Darcy Ford, from Renfrewshire, who hopes to study engineering, said the paper was “unrecognisable” compared with previous years. “People are under a huge amount of pressure now because they feel that the effort they put into the exam will not be reflected in their final grade,” she told the BBC. “They think this could seriously impact their future.” She has complained to Qualifications Scotland and called for adjusted grade boundaries.

Reports suggest some pupils were left in tears after the exam, with many describing the wording as “weird” and the structure as inconsistent. The petition itself accused the paper of penalising well-prepared students by departing from the style and command words used in earlier exams.

Teachers defend exam

Despite the widespread student anger, several maths teachers and online educators have argued that the paper was a fair assessment of the curriculum and not unusually difficult.

Andrew Moulden, a maths teacher and founder of the website maths.scot, told the BBC he was “very, very close to all of these questions” and had a good idea of what had come up since the year 2000. “This was nothing special,” he said. “There was no phraseology at all that was out of the ordinary. It’s a bit of a mystery to me really.”

He acknowledged that many students appeared to have been “thrown sideways” but said the cause was unclear. Moulden pointed out that some questions were designed to “separate those who have a really deep, solid understanding of the intricacies of a topic, and those who don’t”.

David Clelland, who runs the popular maths YouTube channel Clelland Maths with more than 20,000 subscribers, agreed that while the paper was “quite high pressure and hard in places”, the command words used were not unusual. He said that during a last-minute livestream the night before the exam, he had covered many questions that were “pretty much in the exam”.

“I feel bad for the pupils that feel really bad about it,” Clelland said. “But at the same time, although the paper might have been a bit more challenging than last year’s paper, it isn’t beyond the realms of what we’d expect.”

Teachers and commentators have noted that this is not the first time a Scottish maths exam has sparked controversy. In 2015, the pass mark for Higher Maths was lowered to 34 per cent after pupils complained that a question involving a crocodile and a zebra was too difficult — an estimated 98 per cent of students failed it. The then-regulator, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), admitted the paper was “more demanding than intended”. The following year, a petition against the National 5 Maths exam gained more than 20,000 signatures with similar complaints. Some education experts have also raised concerns about “dumbing down”, while data from PISA rankings suggests maths anxiety is widespread among Scottish teenagers, potentially worsened by a reliance on rote learning and past paper practice.

Official response

Qualifications Scotland, the new examination body that replaced the SQA earlier this year, said all exam papers are checked to ensure they are “clear, fair and suitable”. In a statement, a spokesman said: “We welcome all feedback. We know sitting exams can be a stressful and challenging time and learners will feel differently about how each exam has gone for them.

“We also receive feedback from teachers and the maths community, who have said that while challenging, they found the exam to be fair. Exam papers can vary in difficulty year by year and this is taken into account during our normal marking and grading process so learners can be assured that their final grades fairly reflect their achievements and maintain standards.”