And Edinburgh schools appear to have done rather well.
The waiting will finally be over today as thousands of pupils across Edinburgh receive their exam results.
Early indications are that candidates in Scotland’s capital have once again exceeded expectations from previous years and that the city’s overall good performance has been maintained.
A total of 42,780 resulted awards were certificated for 8,402 candidates.
By the end of S6 61% of all pupils achieved one or more Highers – a four percentage point improvement on last year and a 13 percentage point improvement since 2009.
By the end of S5 54% of all pupils achieved one or more Highers – a two percentage point improvement on last year and a 12 percentage point improvement since 2009.
Overall for S4 pupils who sat the new qualifications for the first time, 13,585 awards were certificated at the new National 5 level, 8,342 awards were certificated at the new National 4 level and 1,846 awards were certificated at the new National 3 level.
Jack Gargan (17), the Dux at Portobello High School who studied Maths, Computing, Physics, Tech Studies and English at Higher, said: “I am really hoping to get five As to fulfil my ambition to study Physics or Computer Science at Edinburgh University. After the summer I start my Advanced Highers in Maths, Physics and Computing and so will need to keep up the hard work.”
Councillor Paul Godzik, Education Convener for the City of Edinburgh Council, welcomed today’s results. He said: ““Recently published figures from Audit Scotland showed Edinburgh is outperforming similar city and neighbouring local authorities and early indications from the SQA exam results show that 2014 has been another really positive year for our pupils, with performance rising yet again.
“This year’s provisional results are very encouraging with 100% of pupils achieving an English qualification by the end of S5. By the end of S6, an impressive 61% achieved one or more Highers which is a 13 percentage point improvement since 2009.
“I want to congratulate all those who sat exams this year, and thanks must also go to all our teaching staff who have been working extremely hard for the introduction of the new Nationalexams.
“Another key aim is to make sure all school leavers enter a positive destination of employment, training or further education. Initiatives such as the Edinburgh Guarantee are going a long way to making this a reality for many of our ex-pupils.
“This year a record 91% of young people achieved and sustained a positive destination. This is something we will continue to build on in the coming years and look forward to seeing many more placements and positive results.”
All candidates will receive their results by means of traditional postal delivery this morning.
Those candidates who have activated their MySQA accounts, by means of which they can choose to receive their exam results by text in addition to their results certificate, will also receive these by 9:00am today.
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