PUPILS who sat controversial new school exams earlier this year faced a "relentless" and "overwhelming" workload, a national parents' group has said.

The National Parent Forum of Scotland warned that National 5 qualifications - which replaced Standard Grade - had involved a "mountain of content" in some of the subjects.

The comments come in a written submission to the Scottish Parliament's education committee, which is today taking evidence from Michael Russell, the Education Secretary, on the introduction of the new exams, which are part of the wider Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms.

The submission states: "The view from parents was that schools were taking very different approaches and there were few signs of convergence around a preferred model.

"Some schools seemed organised and confident.... while others seemed on the back foot with stressed and unsure teachers failing to provide reassurance or credible information."

The body also attacked Holyrood's education committee for failing to invite parents' groups to give evidence to their inquiry into the implementation of CfE. The implementation was also criticised by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in a separate submission to the Holyrood committee.

The submission said: "CfE has suffered profoundly from a lack of pilot trials and independent evaluation.

"In this context, we are particularly concerned about inadequate attention having been given to the design and implementation of the assessment strategy.

"While we recognise that additional support has been provided.... we have been concerned at the reactive nature of these developments."