This week marks a pivotal week for Scottish students as they receive their exam results to secure university places for next year.
More than 28,300 applicants celebrated being accepted into higher education as results of Scottish qualifications were delivered to over 140,000 students across the world either by post, email or by text message.
Of the 140,000 students who received their results this week, a huge 45,200 students elected to receive their exam results by text message. Making this text message the most important message they would have received certainly last week!
Although the vast majority of results were delivered by Royal Mail, delivering results by SMS proved again to be poplar with students with over a third signing up to receive their results instantly via text message.
Unlike The Royal Mail, results sent by text message requires less preparation time and can be instantly delivered to students, simultaneously across the world. Posting results to more than 45 countries, including Singapore and Australia required many months of preparation and planning from a dedicated resource team at The Royal Mail.
Exam results via text message, like those send by the Scottish Qualifications Authority to 45,200 students across the world, are personalised with the results that would have been posted to their MySQA account. Also, with a 100% delivery rate and sending up to 8,000 messages per second, it took less than three minutes to send each message to most of the 45,200 students eagerly awaiting their results.
About SQA exam results by text
Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) is the authority that provides exams to 140,000 students in over 500 state and private schools in Scotland.
Created in 2007, MySQA is an online communications and results portal developed by SQA for school pupils, college students and professionals. It is also the portal where candidates could sign up to receive exam results by email and text message as well as by post. Of the 50,000 users who registered to use the portal in 2016, 90% elected to receive their results by text message.
Delivering exam results by text message was an ideal solution for SQA and has proven to be a fast way to get results out especially if the candidate is on holiday or does not want to wait to receive a letter through the post.
Indeed, results day is an anxious time with excitement on social media building from the early hours of last Tuesday’s result day. By sending exam results by text message, students do not have to worry about delays in the post and can share their results quickly from their smartphones.
Results day is a critical day for students, there’s a lot riding on the results, university places or career development. Getting their results means that they can take the next steps into university or into a career. By offering results by SMS, SQA are showing that they are listening and providing information via an accessible route.
Find out more about how Textlocal is delivering on business SMS for education and how we are working with schools, university and colleges to deliver an award-winning service.
