The long-term effects of Covid on Scottish education are stark when you consider this: the new S5s, who will be taking Highers en masse towards the end of this school year, are the last year group to have had a primary education entirely unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Beyond the immediate impact of Covid after the first lockdown in March 2020 - school buildings closed, transitions to P1 and S1 thrown awry, exams cancelled - the pandemic has had a lingering impact, and even after national exams returned from a two-year hiatus, it was not a complete return to pre-Covid assessment arrangements.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority has now published the 2024 SQA exam timetable - but what has the journey to the exams been like for those students in upper secondary now?

The span of the disruption is clear in our graphic below: the P7s who experienced a final term of primary school that was hugely disrupted by Covid are now in the senior phase, while this year’s S6s had less than two years of secondary school under their belts when the pandemic reached Scotland.

Those P7s at the start of the Covid pandemic, now in S4, did not get a proper transition to secondary, and their initial experiences of secondary school, in 2020-21, were often far removed from a typical year. Yet, when they come to sit the first national SQA exams of their schooldays in 2024 there will be no adaptations to assessment - in terms of the removal of coursework or elements of the exam, as there have been for the past two years - and it is anticipated that there will be no more lenient approach to grading, as there has been for the past two years.

The 2022-23 school year also saw disruption of another sort, with teacher pay strikes leading to a number of days off for every pupil in Scotland, although teachers would attest to the long-term benefits for teaching and learning when pay and conditions are improved.

And 2022-23 also saw schools closed to mark the Queen’s funeral and the coronation of King Charles.

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