PUPILS who sat new Scottish school exams were treated like "guinea pigs", according to their parents.

The accusation was made at an event to look at the impact of new National and Higher exams, organised by the National Parent Forum of Scotland.

Families from across the west of Scotland who attended the meeting in Glasgow said pupils had been placed under too much stress with a high workload, constant internal assessments and uncertainty over curriculum content. "It really feels like death by assessment," said one.

There was also concern that sample materials provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) did not match the exams.

One parent said: "I feel really devastated about my son's experience. He's a real guinea pig. How many kids have been put off education completely?"

The concerns, which have been detailed in a report of the event by research company Rocket Science UK, came after the SQA introduced a raft of new exams and assessments as part of the roll-out of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms.

Under the changes, Standard Grades were replaced with National 4 and National 5 exams last year and Highers were revised this summer to reflect the changing content of the curriculum.

However, parents said the roll-out of the new qualifications could have been handled more effectively.

The report states: "Parents were very concerned about children.... being guinea pigs, with the potential for long-term impacts on their career prospects and confidence.

"Many parents were concerned about the level of stress their children were under, particularly in S4 which was exacerbated by some teachers under extreme stress passing it on to their pupils.

"Stress on both pupils and teachers in these transition years seems to be the result of both high workloads, constant rolling assessments and uncertainty about the new syllabus for each subject and new qualifications."

The report concluded that there was a widespread feeling that pupils sitting the new Highers had not been adequately prepared for the style of questions in some papers - including a controversial maths Higher paper.

Thousands of candidates have already signed online petitions venting their anger at the SQA over the difficulty of the maths paper and parents at the forum event called for a review to ensure issues were not repeated next year.

A spokesman for the SQA said: "The development and implementation of the new National qualifications was agreed with all parts of the Scottish education system, including teachers, schools, Education Scotland, Scottish Government, local authorities and parent bodies.

"We have always listened very carefully to feedback from teachers, parents and students and we provide a detailed programme of support.

"If we believe candidates have found questions more or less challenging than we anticipated, then we will make allowances for this when we set the grade boundaries."

In addition, parents told the meeting there was a significant discrepancy between the number of National 5 qualifications pupils were sitting in different areas schools with numbers ranging from six to nine.

One a more positive note, parents with children in the second year of the new Nationals felt there were "some signs" schools were beginning to adapt to the new qualifications.

However, in some cases that meant going against the underlying philosophy of CfE by starting to study for exams in S3 which is supposed to be part of the "broad general education".

The report found most parents were "particularly concerned" about the Higher maths paper although "the feeling teachers did not know what to expect from new Highers exams appeared to be a wider problem across subject areas".

One parent said of her daughter: "Her confidence in the exams has been damaged and she is even more frightened to go into the next one. She feels that no matter how much she studies it may not do any good anyway. She has lost motivation and I am sure this has affected her next exam."

In particular there was concern exam questions had become too much a test of literacy which was putting off some candidates who cold otherwise have answered the questions.

The report added: "SQA's process for setting papers is thought to deserve investigation..... to ensure that future papers are more strongly quality-controlled, assess pupils across the full spectrum, and are appropriately accessible.

"While the integration of literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills into subject teaching is a key aim of CfE, parents felt it may be fairer for students to restrict this integration to the classroom and allow assessments to focus on subject area skills."