The move was in response to last year's Wolf report which said that some qualifications were worthless.

BBC: Government accused of engineering diploma U-turn

The revised AS-level, replacing the Advanced Supplementary exam, was one of the main recommendations arising from Lord Dearing's review of qualifications for 16 to 19 year olds.

BBC: Exam expert says 'too much testing'

Bill Morton, chief executive of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, has promised that there will not be a repeat of last year's problems, in which thousands of students received inaccurate or incomplete results.

BBC: A-level results