SQA Appeals Process: What to Do If Your Child's Results Are Wrong

Results day, August. Your child opens their phone, and the grade is wrong. Not wrong-ish — properly wrong. Two bands below their prelim, out of line with everything the teacher said all year. What now?

Scotland has a free appeals service for exactly this situation. It comes with deadlines measured in days and a risk most families don’t expect — but, contrary to what a lot of older guidance says, it does not have to run through the school. Here’s how it actually works.

What an appeal actually involves

There is one appeals service, not a ladder of separate stages. When you appeal, a senior marker reviews the answers in your child’s Qualifications Scotland-marked assessments — question papers and assignments — and checks four things:

• that marks were given in line with the marking standards
• that all parts of the assessments were marked
• that the marks were added up correctly
• that the correct result was entered on the system

That single review therefore covers both the “did somebody miss a page” worry and the “was this marked too harshly” worry. You don’t need to submit any evidence — the review looks at the script, not at a case you build around it. (The review checks the marking against that year’s boundaries; the boundaries themselves are fixed and can’t be appealed — how grade boundaries are set explains why.)

It is free, at every stage.

When you can’t appeal

Qualifications Scotland will not accept an appeal if:

• the course award was cancelled for malpractice (rule-breaking)
• the grade was awarded through the Examination Exceptional Circumstances Consideration Service
• the grade was an A — there is nothing above it to move to

Who can request a review

If you’re appealing on your child’s behalf, four rules apply: get their permission first; use a different email address for each child; make sure they understand the grade can go down as well as up; and note that your child cannot appeal separately if you do it for them — one appeal per grade, through one route.

The one thing that does still need the school: a priority appeal has to be approved by the school, college or training provider, even when you submit it yourself. Tell them the name of the university, college or employer whose conditional offer depends on the grade.

In practice, most schools will support a request if the pupil asks and the teacher agrees there is a reasonable case. Schools are unlikely to back an appeal where the grade is in line with classwork and prelim performance, because of the risk that the grade drops.

Step by step: what to do after results day

1. 1

   Compare the grade to the evidence

   Look at your child's prelim result, teacher estimate (if shared), and coursework marks. If the exam grade is broadly in line with these, a review is unlikely to help. If there is a gap of one or more grade bands, there may be a case.
2. 2

   Contact the school immediately

   Phone or email your child's guidance teacher or the relevant subject teacher on results day or the morning after. They know the marking standards and your child's work, and a priority appeal needs their approval regardless of who submits it.
3. 3

   Discuss the risk honestly

   Ask the teacher whether they think an appeal is worth it. There is no zero-risk option any more — the single review can move the grade down as easily as up, and the decision is final.
4. 4

   Decide who submits — you or the school

   You or your parent/carer can appeal through the learner direct appeals service, or the school can submit for you. Only one route per grade: your child cannot appeal separately if you do it for them. Check which deadline applies — the learner route closes earlier.
5. 5

   Register and submit before the deadline

   For the learner direct service you register separately from My Qualifications Scotland, with the pupil's name, email, date of birth and Scottish Candidate Number. If the school is submitting, confirm with them that they have actually lodged it.
6. 6

   Wait for the outcome

   Priority appeal decisions are issued on 31 August 2026 to schools, colleges and training providers. All other decisions come in October 2026, and Qualifications Scotland warns they may be later if appeal volumes are high.

Timelines and deadlines

The exact dates shift each year. These are the 2026 dates, published by Qualifications Scotland:

• Tuesday 4 August — results day. Grades released; the appeals service opens at 9am. The clock starts.
• Tuesday 11 August — last day you, or your parent or carer, can ask for a priority appeal.
• Thursday 20 August — last day your school, college or training provider can ask for a priority appeal for you.
• Tuesday 25 August — last day you or your parent/carer can lodge an ordinary appeal.
• Friday 28 August — last day your school can lodge an ordinary appeal for you.
• Monday 31 August — priority appeal decisions issued to schools, colleges and training providers.
• October 2026 — decisions on all other appeals. Qualifications Scotland notes these may run later if appeal volumes are high.

Note the two-tier pattern: the route you submit through changes the deadline, and the learner/parent deadline is the earlier one in both cases. If you are appealing yourself, you have nine days from results day for a priority appeal, not the school’s seventeen. Qualifications Scotland publishes the dates for each diet on its website.

Exceptional circumstances

If your child was affected by illness, bereavement, a family crisis, or another serious disruption around the time of the exam, the school can submit an exceptional circumstances application. This is a separate process from an appeal — it asks Qualifications Scotland to consider whether the grade would have been higher if the disruption had not occurred.

Evidence matters here. Medical certificates, letters from GPs, school attendance records, and any documentation of the circumstances all strengthen the case. Note that a grade already awarded through the Examination Exceptional Circumstances Consideration Service cannot then be appealed.

The role of estimates and prelim results

When a school decides whether to support a review request, two numbers matter most:

• The teacher estimate — the grade the school submitted to SQA/Qualifications Scotland before the exam, based on classwork, prelims, and professional judgment.
• The prelim result — the grade achieved in the school’s own mock exam, usually sat in January or February.

If both of these point to a higher grade than the exam result, the case for a review is strong. If the exam grade is in line with both, there is little reason to believe a re-mark will produce a different outcome — and the risk of a lower grade is real.

UCAS and university implications

If your child has a conditional university offer that depends on the grade under review, the situation is time-sensitive.

• Priority appeals exist for exactly this reason. Tell the school a university place is at stake and give them the institution's name — they have to approve the priority status even if you submit the appeal yourself. Your own deadline (11 August in 2026) is earlier than theirs (20 August).
• Universities know about the appeals process. Most will hold a place open for a short window while a priority review is processed, especially if the school contacts admissions directly.
• UCAS Hub updates when the grade changes. If a priority appeal raises the grade, UCAS is notified and the offer can be confirmed — even after the original results day.
• Do not reject your insurance offer prematurely. Keep both firm and insurance choices live until the review is resolved. If you release your insurance place and the appeal does not change the grade, you may end up in Clearing with fewer options.

What has changed under Qualifications Scotland?

Qualifications Scotland took over SQA's functions across late 2025 and early 2026 (the three milestone dates are set out here). The appeals process did not survive that handover unchanged, which is why so much guidance still online is wrong. The key changes:

• Rebranding — the service is now run under Qualifications Scotland rather than SQA.
• One appeals service, not three stages — the old clerical check / marking review / formal appeal ladder has been replaced by a single review by a senior marker, which folds the administrative checks into the same process. The practical consequence is that the zero-risk option is gone: every appeal can move the grade down.
• A learner direct route — pupils, and parents or carers acting for them, can now appeal without going through the school. Priority appeals still need the school to approve them.
• Free — appealing costs nothing, at any stage.

So the old advice that "the school submits and you wait" is no longer the whole picture. Speaking to the school first is still the sensible move, but the deadline that applies to you is the earlier one.

Should you challenge the result?

The appeals process exists for a reason, and it works — every year, genuine marking errors are caught and grades are corrected. But it is not a lottery ticket. The single most important thing to understand is that grades can go down, and that lower grade becomes permanent. Schools know this, which is why they are cautious about which cases they back.

If your child’s exam grade is significantly out of step with their prelim, their coursework, and their teacher’s estimate, an appeal is worth pursuing. If the grade is disappointing but broadly in line with the evidence, your energy is almost certainly better spent on the next step — whether that is an S6 retake, a Clearing place, or a revised UCAS application. The appeals process is a safety net for genuine errors, not a mechanism for turning a fair C into a hopeful B.

Talk to the school. Listen to the teacher. And if you do go ahead, do it with your eyes open.