Can you pass the Higher Maths exam the SQA admitted was ‘challenging’?

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy It’s official: that crocodile and zebra duo are to blame for possibly the hardest maths exam in the UK this year. On the day almost 150,000 pupils were slowly tearing open that brown envelope to reveal their results, the exam board admitted on its website the new assessment ‘proved to be more demanding than intended’ and that the grade boundaries were reduced from 45 per cent for a C-grade to 34 per cent. Hopefully, though, the SQA will learn its lesson after the former principal assessor who was responsible for setting the maths exam until 2012, Jim Reid, today told BBC Scotland alarm bells should have been ringing throughout the exam board ‘far, far in advance’, adding that a lack of experience and a short time scale could have contributed to the paper’s difficulty.