*This piece was originally published on 30 March 2021*

Students sitting national qualifications usually have a tense wait until August for their SQA results - but this year they will be “99.9 per cent” certain of the grade they are getting before the summer holidays get underway, says Scotland’s secondary headteachers’ organisation.

Tes Scotland understands that some schools and councils even plan on issuing their students with a document detailing their provisional results to coincide with them being submitted to the exam body, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA), by the deadline of 25 June.

This prompted one teacher to tell Tes Scotland: “If this becomes the norm [across all secondaries], it kind of renders the already quite redundant SQA slightly more redundant. They’ll be doing little else than printing out the same information on better paper and posting it out.”

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The change in approach has come about as a result of the cancellation of the exams prompted by the disruption caused by the coronavirus.

SQA results 2021: Students ‘will know their grades before summer holidays’

This means that the onus is now on schools and teachers to determine students’ results - with quality assurance carried out at a local and national level.

Last year there was explicit advice from teaching unions that teachers should not to share their estimates with students.

In guidance published in spring 2020, the EIS union said that teacher estimates must “absolutely not” be shared with families as this could result in parents applying pressure to increase grades.

However, this year the emphasis is on keeping students abreast of the result they are on track to receive and ensuring that they understand how that grade has been arrived at.

The change has come about following the results debacle last year, in which 25 per cent of teacher estimates were adjusted - over 90 per cent of which were adjusted down - and some young people were faced with results in August that bore no resemblance to the grades they had expected to receive.

Ultimately, the government was forced to revert to teacher estimates for all downgraded results.

This year there is to be no algorithm, and quality assurance of estimates is to be carried out before provisional results are submitted by schools to the SQA by 25 June, which means grades are unlikely to change between then and results day on 10 August.

Jim Thewliss, general secretary of School Leaders Scotland (SLS), said: “The result sent to the SQA on 25 June is still the provisional result. Just in case something is lost in transmission, it stays the provisional result until it has gone through that checking process, but it’s 99.9 per cent certain that is the result they will receive in August.

“Back in the days when I was a geography teacher, you knew more or less what the kids were going to get but there was that doubt created by the fact they had to sit an exam and they might do a bit better or a bit worse.

“But this year we are in completely different circumstances. No child should be surprised to learn ‘here’s the result you are going to get’. We can’t have that. Children have got to know all the way through how they are progressing.”

An SQA spokesperson said: “We have been very clear that results this year will be based on teacher and lecturer judgements, supported by evidence of demonstrated attainment. The National Qualifications Group* guidance, published on 16 February, stated that provisional results will be provided to learners prior to being submitted to SQA, having already undergone both local and national quality assurance.

“We also wrote to every learner in Scotland at the start of March, stating that provisional results will be provided and that SQA will not change those results, but check for any administrative errors which may occur when schools, colleges or training providers enter the data into the system.

“This year’s alternative certification model (ACM) has been developed by the National Qualifications Group, which includes wide representation from the education system.”