Pupils and teachers are being put under “immense pressure” due to huge increases in the use of dual-presentation in schools, the Scottish Government has been warned.
Freedom of Information disclosures released by Scotland’s exams watchdog shows that the number of dual-presented pupils has increased massively since 2019. For some subjects, the changes represent rises of several hundred percent.
Dual-presentation means that pupils are entered for both National 4 and National 5 courses in the same year, requiring them to complete the assessments and submissions for both levels.
The increases in dual-presentation rates come despite a 2018 decision by the Scottish Government to end the practice in order to reduce workload for both teachers and pupils.
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth has recently written to all local authority Directors of Education in an attempt to reduce the number of dual presentations. However, Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, hit out at “pressure on school to boost their statistics, regardless of the impact on learners,” and called on the Scottish Government to accelerate plans to reform the country’s qualifications system.
In 2019, the number of pupils dual-presented for National 4 and National 5 English stood at 1746. The figure fell slightly the following year, but then began to increase once more. Data from 2023 shows that 5832 pupils were dual presented last year, an increase of 234% over a five year period.
Other subjects with extremely high increases in dual presentation rates included Art & Design (393%), Music (374%) and Spanish (238%).
Although the rates of dual presentation in maths had fallen since 2019, they have increased every year since 2020. At the same time, the number of pupils entered for both National 4 and National 5 in Applications of Maths – a more accessible and practical option that traditional mathematics – just jumped by nearly 250%.
