Higher Computing Science: the 2027 exam, the assignment and practice questions

The Higher Computing Science exam in 2027

The exam is on Thursday 27 May 2027, from 09:00 to 11:00 (2027 timetable). The structure is from the course specification, valid since session 2023 to 2024: the paper is 67% of the course and the assignment 33%. Computing Science wasn't one of the courses given a shorter exam for 2026 to 2027.

Programming questions use Qualifications Scotland's reference language, but you can answer in any language. The assignment is set each year by Qualifications Scotland, done in class within 6 hours (usually over several sessions, once the course is taught), open book but supervised, and marked externally.

What Higher Computing Science covers

• Software design and development: modular programs with parameter passing, local and global scope, records and arrays of records, sequential files, and standard algorithms such as linear search, finding a minimum or maximum, and counting occurrences.
• Computer systems: two's complement, floating point, Unicode, processor performance and cache, environmental impact of intelligent systems, and security risks, precautions and laws.
• Database design and development: at least three linked tables, with SQL including aggregate functions, grouping and wildcards.
• Web design and development: HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Higher Computing Science grade boundaries

In 2026, out of 120 (the 80-mark paper plus the 40-mark assignment), an A needed 84, a B 72, a C 60 and a D 48. Of the 3,989 candidates, 45.2% got an A (course report 2026). The report says both parts performed as intended, so the boundaries weren't adjusted, and that 66% of candidates took the database option. Boundaries change every year.

Higher Computing Science practice questions

We wrote these for this guide.

1. Two's complement

Question: convert the 8-bit two's complement number 11101010 to denary. Answer: the leftmost bit is worth −128. So the value is −128 + 64 + 32 + 8 + 2 = −22. A quick check: read it as unsigned (234) and subtract 256. Try more in the Two's Complement Calculator.

2. Floating point

Question: a system keeps the same total number of bits for floating point numbers but gives more of them to the mantissa. What is the effect? Answer: numbers are stored with more precision, but the exponent has fewer bits, so the range of numbers that can be stored gets smaller.

3. Linear search on an array of records

Question: an array of records holds songs, each with a title and a year. Write a linear search that finds the position of the first song released in a chosen year, or reports that there isn't one. Answer: in Python, with each record as a dictionary:

def find_year(songs, target):
    position = -1
    index = 0
    while index < len(songs) and position == -1:
        if songs[index]["year"] == target:
            position = index
        index = index + 1
    return position

Start position at −1, a value that can't be a real index, and stop as soon as a match is found. The 2026 course report found many candidates set up their starting values wrongly, giving wrong output for some data. Count the checks a linear search makes in our Search Algorithms course and press Mark.

4. SQL with grouping

Question: list each house with its number of pupils, largest first, from a Pupil table. Answer:

SELECT house, COUNT(*) AS pupils
FROM Pupil
GROUP BY house
ORDER BY pupils DESC;

5. Local variables

Question: why does using local variables make a program more efficient? Answer: a local variable only exists while its subprogram runs, and its memory is released when the subprogram ends, so the program uses less memory. Answer about efficiency: the 2026 report found most answers talked about modularity or maintainability instead.

Common Higher Computing Science mistakes

From the 2026 course report:

• Digital certificates and signatures mixed up. A certificate links a public key to an owner and domain; a signature proves who sent a message and that it wasn't changed.
• Wrong risks for tracking cookies, and environmental answers that don't mention the intelligent system's technology.
• Data flow: using parallel arrays when an array of records was expected, or passing parameters that aren't needed.
• Changing the purpose instead of the code when asked how to fix a procedure.
• Loose requirements in database analysis: phrase them as "a query to ...".

Use a daily paper as a short timed prelim

Today's Higher Computing Science paper covers processor architecture, number representation and floating point, data structures, searching, and databases and SQL, which overlap Higher. It also includes recursion, object oriented programming, regular expressions, finite state machines, networking and graph algorithms, which aren't in Higher, and it doesn't cover web design. Use it for part of Section 1 and the database option, alongside the official past papers. For prelim dates, see our prelims guide.

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