Teachers have defended a controversial maths exam despite 14,000 pupils signing a petition criticising the paper for being too difficult.
The Higher Maths paper had come under fire from Scottish pupils, who claimed it was "unrecognisable" from the paper they had prepared for in class.
A petition had been set up decrying the exam, calling it "poorly worded, inconsistently structured, and out of step with every previous paper".
However, teachers have now hit back, saying the paper was nothing out of the ordinary.
Maths teacher Andrew Moulden told the BBC: "I'm very, very close to all of these questions. I have a good idea of what's come up back to the year 2000. This was nothing special.
"There was no phraseology at all that was out of the ordinary. It's a bit of a mystery to me really.
"The experience of the students is, of course, undeniable, it's clear that a lot of them were thrown sideways. But we don't know why."
He pointed out that some questions on the paper were intended to "separate those who have a really deep, solid understanding of the intricacies of a topic, and those who don't".
The exam paper was criticised by pupils
|GETTY
David Clelland, who runs a maths YouTube Channel with over 20,000 subscribers, said that, while the questions were "quite abstract", the command words used in the paper were not unusual.
He said: "I run a last-minute livestream the night before the exam, and a lot of the questions I went through were pretty much in the exam.
"Obviously things were different, but in terms of the style and words - and I made that up based on previous exam papers."
"I feel bad for the pupils that feel really bad about it. But at the same time, although the paper might have been a bit more challenging than last year's paper, it isn't beyond the realms of what we'd expect."
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Teachers hit back against the petition
| GETTYPupils had claimed that the wording was "weird", adding that they were thrown by some of the questions on the paper.
Arran Bauer, from Stirling, said: "There were quite a few questions within there that were not standard practice and I had to stare at the question for a while to figure out what was going on."
The 16-year-old said: "There were definitely a few spread throughout the paper where it was different wording that they hadn't used before, but I kind of recognised the question type, which helped me answer the question."
He added the language was "not routine to the modern day higher".
Pupils complained the paper was 'unrecognisable'
|PA
Another pupil concerned about the wording of the paper was Darcy Ford, from Renfrewshire, who said the paper was "unrecognisable" compared to others.
Ms Ford, who is hoping to go into engineering, said: "I spoke to a lot of people that sat the exam as well, and people are under a huge amount of pressure now because they feel that the effort they put into the exam will not be reflected in their final grade.
"They think this could seriously impact their future...obviously maths is one of the main subjects required for [engineering] and it's a very competitive field.
"But now I am concerned that my maths grade is going to hold me back."
A spokesman from Qualifications Scotland said: "We welcome all feedback. We know sitting exams can be a stressful and challenging time and learners will feel differently about how each exam has gone for them.
"We also receive feedback from teachers and the maths community, who have said that while challenging, they found the exam to be fair.
"Exam papers can vary in difficulty year by year and this is taken into account during our normal marking and grading process so learners can be assured that their final grades fairly reflect their achievements and maintain standards."