Communications with Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) regarding 2021 exam diet: FOI release

Information requested

• Any internal Scottish Government communications (including letters, emails, text messages, typed or hand-written notes, phone calls or otherwise) regarding the 2021 SQA exam diet. I would like this information from 09 September 2020 to 07 October 2020.
• Any communications (including letters, emails, text messages, typed or hand-written notes, phone calls or otherwise) between the Scottish Government and the SQA regarding the 2021 exam diet. I would like this information from 09 September 2020 to 07 October 2020.

Response

Internal communications

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested in the first part of your request would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that the large volume of information that falls within scope means that the time taken to prepare the information for release, including making necessary redactions, would exceed the cost limit. Under section 12 of FOISA, public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. You may wish to narrow your request to a particular aspect of the subject matter, or consider narrowing the time frame of your request to a one or two-week period. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Communications between Scottish Government and SQA

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the second part of your request.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names and contact details of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI-202000096252-Information Released-Annex A

File type

37 page PDF

File size

2.1 MB