Education
Delivering Over 50,000 Exam Results to Scottish Students on Results Day
How Qualifications Scotland used BT Smart Messaging, powered by Soprano, to send exam results via SMS to 50,000+ Scottish students on one of the biggest days in the academic calendar.
Qualifications Scotland is the national awarding body responsible for managing and delivering exam results to students across Scotland.
Each year, it oversees the release of results to tens of thousands of students, ensuring they receive their exam results at the same time, with students able to opt in to receive them digitally via SMS or email.
Delivering exam results to more than 50,000 students at the same moment each year is one of Qualifications Scotland’s most visible and time-critical responsibilities.
Students who opt in to receive their results by text expect immediate access as soon as results are released. This means messages need to be sent at a precise moment, with no margin for delay or failure.
Their previous messaging provider could no longer support this requirement, leaving Qualifications Scotland in need of a solution capable of delivering high volumes of personalised SMS messages simultaneously, at a fixed point in time.
Qualifications Scotland selected BT Smart Messaging, powered by Soprano, following a competitive tender process.
Working closely with Qualifications Scotland, BT and Soprano designed a tailored SMS solution that could deliver personalised messages to tens of thousands of students at a precise, pre-defined moment. Each message contained the student’s candidate number, subjects taken and grades achieved, giving them immediate access to their results as soon as they were released.
To support this, the platform was configured to handle high-volume, simultaneous message delivery, with rigorous testing carried out ahead of results day to ensure performance at scale.
Thanks to a smooth implementation and careful preparation ahead of the big day, the delivery of Qualifications Scotland’s 2025 exam results was completed successfully.
On results day in August 2025, 50,111 SMS messages were sent simultaneously, ensuring students who had opted in received their exam results at the moment they were released.
With BT Smart Messaging, powered by Soprano, once again supporting results day in 2026, Qualifications Scotland is preparing to deliver exam results to another cohort of Scottish students at an important moment in their education journey.
Results day is one of the most significant days in the academic calendar, not just for us, but for the thousands of students whose next steps depend on it. The successful delivery of last year’s results, at scale and on time, is a real credit to the partnership with BT and Soprano, and the work that went into preparing for the day. It’s exactly the kind of execution we strive for.
– Martin Campbell, Director of Business Systems, Qualifications Scotland
If you need to send a large number of mission-critical messages at a specific moment, you need a platform that you can rely on. Speak to our team of experts to learn about our secure messaging platform.
Think your business could benefit from a similar solution?
Get in touch with us today to tell us about your use case and one of our experts will guide you through the entire process from ideation to implementation.
Bespoke communication solutions
Drive more personalised interactions
We have more use cases available!
