It is partly funded by the Education, Communities and Justice Directorates of the Scottish Government, and employs approximately 750 staff based in Glasgow and Dalkeith.

However, a greater number of candidates of all ages participate in SQA specialist, vocational and higher education qualifications.

A legacy of its two precursor bodies, the Authority's offices remain split over two sites, one in Glasgow and one in Dalkeith.

The introduction of the reformed examinations system was criticised in the press and by the government after a series of administrative and computer errors led to several thousand incorrect Higher and Intermediate certificates being sent out.

[8] SQA has a statutory responsibility to provide public examinations for Scottish state schools, though these are also used more widely.

It has a statutory responsibility to accredit (formally, scrutinise them and confirm that they conform to agreed UK criteria) vocational qualifications.

[13] In order to fight (supposed) grade inflation within the Scottish education sector, SQA has introduced academically and cognitively more rigorous examination standards and stricter marking; this resulted in strong criticism towards the SQA exam board and in decreases of exam pass rates of up to 15%.

[14] There are the many qualifications often imperfectly referred to as vocational, though these are frequently stepping-stones for students at Scottish Colleges of Further Education to pursue one- or two- year programmes tailored from a wide-ranging catalogue of National Units.

The actual programme may be very rigidly prescribed by employers or be entirely freely chosen by the student to meet particular needs.

SVQs are developed by United Kingdom employers in tandem with National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

These qualifications are extremely popular in colleges, workplaces and community education centres in Scotland, the rest of the UK and throughout the world.

There is a suite of National Units addressing the needs of economic migrants, asylum seekers and (the biggest group) those seeking to master English before returning to their own countries.

[16] This evoked heated debates among students, teachers and educationalists; the corresponding grade boundaries for the respective exam were thus adjusted accordingly, with a pass mark as low as 34%.

[citation needed] The National 5 Maths exam, sat on 12 May 2016, in particular Paper 1 (non-calculator), was also criticised by students after being considered much more difficult than previous years.

[21] The SQA faced criticism for the 2018 National 5 History exam as the wrong date was given for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.

[23] Certain exams set by SQA in 2019 have received widespread criticism from pupils, parents, and teaching staff within schools and colleges.

They claimed they bore no resemblance to previous papers, and relied too heavily on problem solving and mathematics skills as opposed to biology content.

The change's resulting unprecedented increase in year-on-year performance was said to be 'outweighed' by the concerns of those affected and the loss of faith in the system.

The content of the guidance was described as "woefully inadequate"[32] and in many cases provided no clarification for what to expect in an exam paper.

[33][31] The Higher and National 5 Engineering Science exams in May 2024 were disrupted and faced criticism due to an error by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), which resulted in an incorrect edition of the data booklet being provided to candidates.