The countdown to exams starts today for school students across the north and north-east after the SQA published the 2025 exam timetable.
The timetable will run from April to June 2025.
Exams begin on Monday, April 28, with the final one taking place on Friday, May 30. Results day is Tuesday, August 5.
To help digest this year’s exam diet, we’ve compiled all of this year’s subjects at National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher levels.
Use our searchable table to find out the date and time for every National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher exam.
Searchable Scottish exam timetable 2025
Pass rates down in 2024
Data from this year’s exam results showed pass rates are down and the attainment gap is now wider than it was in 2019 at National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher.
Overall A-C pass rates for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher dropping across the board when compared with 2023.
At Higher the A-C pass rate was 74.9 per cent this year compared with 77.1 per cent in 2023 (74.8 per cent in 2019).
The SQA cautioned against comparing this year’s exam results data with data from previous years because of the changes to assessment caused by the pandemic.
However, the data from the 2024 exams is, in theory, the most comparable to 2019 – the last year before Covid – since the pandemic hit.
SQA to be scrapped in major changes
Having been a part of every pupil’s life in Scotland since 1997, major changes are afoot at the qualifications body.
The Scottish Government announced in 2021 that the SQA would be scrapped and replaced with a new specialist agency. This following a damning OECD review dubbed the “final nail” in Scotland’s flawed education system.
The Scottish Government has proposed the creation of a new body called Qualifications Scotland in autumn 2025, which will be staffed by SQA personnel.
Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth unveiled The Education (Scotland) Bill in June, saying it includes reform which would “drive improvement right across the education system”.
Plans to scrap the Education Scotland agency have been ditched, with its role to be “refocused” instead.
Conversation