Review the
Unfair Maths
Paper 1

This is not a complaint that the paper was too hard. Students expect to be challenged. The problem is that the 2026 Higher Maths Paper 1 used language and phrasing that was confusing, ambiguous, and inconsistent with every past paper students had revised from. Questions were not simply difficult — they were worded in ways that made it genuinely unclear what was being asked.

Past SQA Higher Maths papers have followed a recognisable style: clear command words, standard notation, and questions that test understanding rather than the ability to decode unusual phrasing. The 2026 Paper 1 departed from this in ways that penalised well-prepared students simply because the wording did not match the conventions they had been taught to expect.

The issues are concentrated in Paper 1, but reviewing both papers reveals significant structural deviations from the established pattern. The clearest proof that this paper broke from established conventions is the straight line data — a topic that has carried significant marks in every single exam diet since the current Higher course began.

The question wording evidence is equally stark. Question 11 on polynomial factors illustrates this precisely. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, students were given consistent, recognisable instructions: show that (x + 2) is a factor and hence, or otherwise, solve f(x) = 0. The same structure. The same command words. The same logical progression — every single year, without exception. Students were taught exactly this pattern. Teachers taught using this language. Revision resources were built around it.

Then in 2026, Question 11 asked students to explain why (x + 2) is the only linear factor — a question type that has never appeared in any Higher Maths paper since the current course began. It requires a fundamentally different kind of reasoning: not just finding a factor, but constructing a justification about uniqueness. No past paper had ever asked for that.

Paper 2 also showed notable departures. With 15 questions across 65 marks, the paper covered an unusually broad range of topics — recurrence relations, graph transformations, area under a curve, perpendicular bisectors, decreasing functions, trigonometric equations, logarithmic graphs, stationary points, wave functions, exponential decay, and double-angle expansion — in a single sitting. This breadth, combined with the unusual wording in Paper 1, left students with little reliable ground to stand on across the full diet.

To anyone outside Scottish schools, the absence of a standalone straight line question might seem like a minor technicality. It is not. The issue is not that students are incapable of sitting a paper where a topic receives less emphasis than expected. The issue is that Qualifications Scotland themselves created the conditions that made prioritising straight line the rational, evidence-based choice — and then, without warning, changed course.

Straight line has appeared as a standalone, dedicated topic worth significant marks in every single Higher Maths paper since this course specification was introduced. Not most years. Every year. Between 8 and 11 marks, reliably, without a single exception. That is not a coincidence or a pattern students imagined. It is the direct result of QS setting papers, year after year, that treated straight line as a fixture of the exam.

We accept that papers should differ. Variety in difficulty, in question style, in topic emphasis is a legitimate and welcome part of assessment. No student is entitled to a carbon copy of last year's paper. But there is a meaningful difference between reasonable variation and a sudden, unexplained, significant collapse in the presence of a topic that has featured without exception in every prior diet.

The over-reliance on straight line as a revision priority was not a failure of students — it was a predictable consequence of the pattern QS themselves established. Students who prepared thoroughly were not making an unreasonable bet. They were following every piece of evidence available to them, all of it produced by QS. The fault does not lie with students who responded rationally to that evidence.

Some have responded to this petition by arguing that mathematics requires linguistic fluency — that students should be able to interpret any valid mathematical phrasing, regardless of how it is worded. This is a reasonable principle in the abstract. But it ignores how Higher Maths is actually taught in Scottish schools.

In practice, teachers across Scotland do not just hand out past papers for revision — they use past paper questions as the basis for how they teach the subject in the first place. When introducing a new topic, teachers will routinely phrase their examples in exactly the same way those concepts appear in past papers, because that is the wording students will encounter in the exam. We were told, explicitly and repeatedly, that this is what to expect.

If Qualifications Scotland wishes to introduce greater variety in the question styles assessed — and that may well be a worthwhile ambition — then the responsibility lies with QS to communicate that change clearly to teachers, and to update the resources provided to schools accordingly. Students cannot be penalised for preparing in the way they were taught, using the tools they were given, in line with conventions that had held for eight years without alteration.

Higher Mathematics is a gateway qualification for university entry in STEM, medicine, finance, and many other fields. When a paper's wording is inconsistent with established standards, it does not test mathematical ability — it tests whether a student can interpret unusual language under exam pressure.

Those distinctions determine university offers, UCAS conditions, and course placements. When marks are lost not because a student didn't understand the mathematics, but because a question was phrased in a way that had never appeared before and was never taught, that is not a fair reflection of ability.

The way Qualifications Scotland has handled student concern about the 2026 Higher Maths paper is not, unfortunately, without precedent. In 2015, under the previous body — the Scottish Qualifications Authority — students raised serious concerns about that year's Higher Maths paper in almost identical terms: unfamiliar question styles, inconsistency with past paper patterns, and a paper that felt unlike anything they had prepared for. The SQA's initial response was silence, followed by deflection. It was only after sustained media pressure that the SQA was moved to acknowledge the concerns and conduct a review.

Young people did not receive that acknowledgement because the SQA decided their concerns merited it. They received it because journalists decided the story was worth running. The students themselves — the ones who had sat the exam, whose futures depended on the outcome — were not the catalyst for that response. The media was.

In 2026, the pattern has repeated. Qualifications Scotland, the body that replaced the SQA and was explicitly established as a new institution more attuned to the needs of learners in Scotland, initially responded with the same template: reassurance without substance, procedural language in place of genuine engagement. It was not until coverage spread across social media and attracted mainstream press attention that any meaningful statement was forthcoming.

Students who raised concerns about this paper did so in good faith, on the basis of a genuine and well-evidenced grievance. They deserved a prompt, transparent, and substantive response — not because the media was watching, but because they are the people this institution exists to serve.

If Qualifications Scotland wishes to demonstrate that it is something more than a rebranded SQA, it must show that it can hear young people before a camera is pointed at it. That starts with a transparent explanation and a genuine acknowledgement that the language used in certain questions in May 2026 exceeded the standards set by every previous paper in this course's history.

Every signature here represents someone who deserves to be assessed on their maths — not on their ability to decode a question phrased in a way they were never taught, and not on their ability to attract the attention of a newspaper editor.