Congratulations to Scottish students

Congratulations to the thousands of pupils across Scotland who have today received their results in national examinations. Well done on all your hard work - in particular to those taking chemistry qualifications. 

Scottish school qualifications are currently in a period of change and this is the first year of the introduction of the new Higher exams, which are being taken concurrently with the old Higher examinations.

The chemistry Advanced Higher continues to be the second most popular qualification at that level, after mathematics. A total of 2,783 pupils sat the chemistry exam this year, a 4.2% increase in uptake from 2014 and 25% up from 2010.  The percentage of pupils achieving an A grade has increased from 24.9% in 2014 to 33.3% in 2015.

The total number of entries for the chemistry Higher examinations are actually down this year to 10,892, a slight drop of 4.6% in the total uptake of the exam compared to last year. This bucks the trend in the increase we have seen in the past few years of entries to Higher chemistry - entries to chemistry at Higher level this year are still 7% higher than entries in 2010.

While Scottish exam system is undergoing such significant change, we will continue to monitor the impact of the differences in uptake and attainment.

For more information on where your qualifications in chemistry can now take you, see our careers pages.