Higher modern studies: the course, the skills and the evidence

Higher Modern Studies is worth 110 marks: two exam papers and an assignment. Paper 1 tests what you know through essays, Paper 2 tests your source skills, and the assignment tests your research. Here's how each part works, and where to find up to date Scottish evidence for your answers.

How Higher is assessed

Paper 1: the essays

Paper 1 has three sections: democracy in Scotland and the UK, social issues in the UK, and international issues. You answer one question in each. In social issues you pick social inequality or crime and the law, and in international issues a world power or a world issue. Two of your answers are worth 20 marks and one is worth 12. In the 2026 paper and the specimen paper, the 12 mark question was in the international section.

In a 20 mark essay, up to 8 marks are for knowledge and understanding, up to 6 for analysis, up to 2 for structure and up to 4 for conclusions. In a 12 mark essay, up to 8 are for knowledge and the other 4 for analysis or evaluation. Without examples, the most you can get for knowledge is 6 out of 8. That is why recent, accurate Scottish evidence matters so much here.

Paper 2: the source skills

Paper 2 has three questions, and you answer all of them. Each one gives you sources that can be written, numbers, graphs or pictures.

• •Conclusions: back every conclusion with evidence, link sources together, and give an overall conclusion. Leave the overall conclusion out and the most you can get is 8.
• •Objectivity: give evidence for and against the statement, then a judgement on how accurate it is, such as largely accurate. Saying it is completely accurate gets no marks for the judgement, and vague words like partly only get some.
• •Reliability: comment on each source specifically, who made it, when, how and whether it might be biased, then compare all three to pick the most reliable. There is no age cut off. An older source isn't automatically unreliable.

I've written three Paper 2 style practice questions using real Scottish data on the Higher modern studies past papers page.

The assignment

You choose an issue with more than one possible answer, research it over about 8 hours, then write it up as a report in 1 hour and 30 minutes, under exam conditions. You can take in your research sheet, no more than two sides of A4. It has to show your actual research, with each source named.

The 2026 course report said pupils who put only web addresses on their research sheet, then wrote from memory, could not get the analysis marks. Put the actual figures and quotes on the sheet, then refer to them by name in your report. You can only evaluate sources that appear on the sheet.

Good assignment questions from this site's data include: should the Scottish Child Payment be increased, should council tax be replaced, or should Scotland change how it tackles shoplifting. Each has a clear decision to make and official evidence on both sides.

Up to date evidence for each section

Democracy: electoral systems and holding government to account

The current Scottish Parliament shows the Additional Member System at work. SNP holds 56 of 73 constituency seats but only 1 regional. Reform UK has 16 MSPs, all elected from the regional lists. The full table, from Scottish Parliament open data checked 2 November 2026, is in the National 5 notes, and it works just as well at Higher.

For holding government to account, every MSP's page in the directory lists their committee jobs and recorded votes. Committees are one of the main checks on the Scottish Government, so a named convener and what their committee looked at is a strong example.

Social inequality: causes, effects and responses

• •17% of people and 21% of children in Scotland were in poverty in 2022 to 2025. The causes of poverty guide covers why: pay, housing and other costs, and social security.
• •Poverty is deepening for those in it. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found people in poverty had incomes 26% below the poverty line on average.
• •Health inequalities: in 2025 the drug death rate in Scotland's most deprived areas was 54.5 per 100,000, against 3.6 in the least deprived. That is about 15 times higher. See drug deaths and deprivation.
• •Public Health Scotland found children under 16 in the lowest income households were almost four times as likely to have poor general health as those in the highest (11% against 3%, 2016).
• •Government measures: the interim target of under 18% child poverty by 2023/24 was missed. That is strong evidence for a question on whether government measures have worked, balanced by the Scottish Child Payment, which is paid only in Scotland.
• •Local government: 60p of every £1 councils spend on services comes from the Scottish Government, and every council raised council tax in 2026/27, by 7.7% on average. See council tax increase Scotland.

Crime and the law

Recorded shoplifting in Scotland rose from 30,688 in 2019/20 to 53,369 in 2025/26. The shoplifting piece tests economic explanations, such as food prices, against the data, which suits a question on the causes of crime. The Glasgow sex crime analysis shows how to test a claim about crime against police records, and why changes to how crime is recorded matter when you read the figures.

International issues

This site doesn't cover world powers or world issues, so use your class notes and the resources below.

BBC Bitesize higher modern studies and other free help

BBC Bitesize Higher Modern Studies is free and covers democracy in Scotland and the UK, inequality, crime and the law, the USA and China as world powers, and underdevelopment in Africa. It is good for getting the basics straight.

What it can't do is keep every figure current, and markers reward recent examples. So use Bitesize to learn the topic, then swap in the latest Scottish figures from this site and from official sources. The other free essentials are on the Higher Modern Studies course page: the course specification, the specimen papers, the coursework task and the course reports, which tell you exactly where pupils lost marks last year.

Exam dates and grade boundaries

In 2027 both papers are on Wednesday 26 May 2027. Paper 1 runs 9am to 10.45am and Paper 2 11.15am to 12.30pm.