The “moderation” of Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) grades has been a source of controversy and concern since exams were cancelled in March, reaching a crescendo on Tuesday with the simultaneous publication by the SQA of students’ results and a document explaining how they were moderated.

Here’s how it worked, according to the SQA, based on its document (from which the diagram below comes) and on explanations provided during a media briefing on Tuesday, and subsequent questions to the SQA:

• Moderation was used to identify schools that were “significantly outwith” their historical attainment profile.
• It was deemed necessary because the SQA found when it compared teacher estimates to the past four years of attainment data there was “significant overestimation” - for example, at Higher, 2020 estimates would have resulted in an A to C pass rate of 88.8 per cent, 14 percentage points higher than 2019, and a significantly higher pass rate than had been seen for each of the past four years.
• Moderation is used to ensure the outcome of the grade is “fair, valid and reliable” and to ensure consistency of judgements across schools and colleges.

• SQA created centre profiles for every school, which included the minimum and maximum range of attainment based on the previous four years’ attainment history (2016-2019).
• Additional flexibility was factored in because “some variability in grade attainment is to be expected each year, particularly for small-uptake subjects and/or where entry patterns have changed”.
• Profiles for each subject were also created at a national level using historical attainment data and tolerances established.
• This meant, for example, that nationally the SQA expected between 85.3 and 87.4 per cent of pupils would attain an A to C grade for National 5 English, but for lower-uptake subjects, boundaries were wider. So for National 5 Gaelic (learners), somewhere between 67 and 89.6 per cent of pupils were expected by the SQA to attain an A to C grade,
• Where a school’s estimates were outside the range for that course identified in the school’s profile, estimates were adjusted.
• The proportion of young people adjusted could be from one per cent up to 30 per cent.
• Rank order was “sacrosanct” according to SQA - so the order that teachers placed their pupils in was maintained.
• An individual student’s previous attainment data was not used as part of the moderation process, so if they were sitting Higher this year and had sat N5 in 2019, their N5 grade was not factored in; however, the SQA pointed out that teachers were asked to consider a pupil’s prior attainment when estimating their grade.
• For schools and colleges which had no historic attainment data for a course because candidates had never been presented before, teacher estimates were accepted without moderation as there was “no fair or evidential basis on which they could be adjusted”. That applied to around 6,000 candidates.
• Ultimately roughly a quarter (26.2 per cent) of teacher estimates were adjusted, with more than 90 per cent adjusted down.