• What proportion of teacher estimates has been moderated up or down by exam body the Scottish Qualifications Authority? Early indications are that a lot of teacher judgements will have been changed - one head told Tes Scotland that the feeling among school leaders was that the SQA had “just made the results fit what they wanted and the idea of trusting the teachers looks like mostly nonsense”. Another, however, predicted that the SQA had “made the best of an impossible situation”.

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• Have certain subjects or schools had more results moderated by the SQA than others? If so, which? Were teacher estimates for Higher art more likely to be changed than Higher maths? Why? It seems logical that consistently high-achieving schools will not have much to worry about, but what about schools where attainment is more varied - maybe because the roll is small? And what about schools where results have been improving in recent years? Will historical data drag their grades back down?

• Will the Higher pass rate rise this year? The headline news story on results day last year was that the Higher pass rate had fallen in comparison to the previous year, and had dropped by 2.4 per cent since 2016.

• In 2019 pass rates also fell at National 2 (by 2.6 percentage points), National 3 (3.6 percentage points), National 4 (2.6 percentage points) and Advanced Higher (1.1 percentage points). An exception was National 5, where the rate rose from 77.4 per cent in 2018 to 78.2 per cent in 2019. What will happen this year?

• Headline pass rates are interesting, but so are the pass rates for specific subjects. Will there be significant rises or dips in terms of the proportion of candidates passing core subjects like English and maths? And in the year that teacher estimates are supposed to be at the heart of the grading process, what will be behind this?

• As well as the exam results, the SQA will be publishing details of its moderation processes and also its equality impact assessment. These have been very much sought after with the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee calling for their publication ahead of results day, but the SQA refusing. The conclusion that the SQA comes to regarding the impact of this year’s grading process on disadvantaged pupils will be particularly interesting.
• In the days that follow results day, the number of appeals requested by schools will give an indication of how fair-handed schools think the SQA has been. A torrent will raise questions about how the SQA will cope - and also how schools, which will be grappling with reopening, will manage the burden. Recently a teacher on the SQA appeals team told Tes Scotland that there had been no information about what the process will be.

*Tes Scotland will be live blogging throughout SQA results day 2020, on Tuesday 4 August. To find our coverage, go to the Scotland hub of the Tes website.