1/Since the one-off payment of £400 for teachers and lecturers involved in national qualifications was announced yesterday there have been a lot of questions about how much the SQA actually saved last year when the exams were cancelled...

2/ @TesScotland looked into this and found the SQA expected the 2020 exam diet to cost £24.8 million – but, ultimately, it ended up costing just £5.3 million, a saving of £19.5 million.

3/The SQA told us £14.3 million had been returned to the Scottish government, which the government planned to apply “against other spending pressures”.

4/The figures show that the biggest savings when the exams were cancelled last year were: markers fees and expenses (saving of £8.8 million); logistics and events (saving of £5.7 million); and invigilation costs (saving of £3.6 million).

5/The figure teachers have been asking about the most is the cash usually spent on marking. So just to be clear the SQA budgeted to spend £9,154,000 on markers fees and expenses in 2020 and actually spent £336,000

6/Also important is that there will be big savings again this year - given the 2021 exam diet has been cancelled (in case you hadn't noticed)

Although SQA does expect costs in 2021 to be higher due to more evidence gathering and quality assurance and changes to appeals

7/For the full story: https://www.tes.com/news/exclusive-cancelled-exams-save-sqa-almost-ps20m