Leading up to the release of exam results the SQA insisted that it had applied a “sensitive approach” to grading. The problem was that nobody really knew what it meant.

Things have now become a little bit clearer. In the simplest possible terms, the approach saw the SQA lower grade boundaries in order to boost pass rates. The figures may well have declined in comparison to last year but, it seems, things could have been worse.

In a briefing to journalists, SQA officials gave a couple of examples of how this had played out: in modern languages, for example, performance in the listening and talking components seemed a bit weaker than expected; in sciences, a lack of exposure to experiments in recent years had an impact on results outcomes. In both cases, and others, it was felt that the impact of the pandemic was having an effect on young people and so the marks needed to achieve an A, B or C were adjusted down.

Unfortunately, it looks pretty much impossible to pin down the specific impact of the SQA’s approach and the organisation says that it cannot quantify it. This is because some changes to grade boundaries happen each year, and also because they haven’t separated changes made for normal reasons (such as a mistake in the paper, or a question that was more difficult than initially thought) and those made due to the “sensitive approach” specifically.

What’s more, the “generous approach” to grading in place last year also affected grade boundaries, making comparisons even more complicated.

But if the “sensitive approach” gives us lower pass rates and a higher attainment gap than last year, and in some cases worse stats than pre-pandemic levels, that raises questions about the drive back to normal.

How much worse would the results have been if this “sensitive approach” to grading had not been in place?

Would pass rates be much lower? Would the attainment gap be much wider?

Read more: Exam results: Are we closing the attainment gap?

If so, is that theoretical set of results – which was staved off this year – something like what we should expect to see next year?

In the desperate drive back to normality, with adjustments being made each year just to make sure that the apparently precious national exam diet can go ahead, have we perhaps missed, or even ignored, the scale of Covid’s impact on young people? Have the government and the SQA lost sight of what really matters and, once again, prioritised the idea of ‘credibility’ over the needs of young people?