So here we are again: another exam results day, another SQA shambles.
This morning, nearly 150,000 students across the country woke up to await their results with the inevitable mixture of excitement, anticipation and anxiety that we all felt at their age.
There are always those keen to tell young people that exams grades don’t really matter, and they’ll find their way in life regardless – but they very obviously do matter, otherwise we wouldn’t bother with the whole system. Results might not shut off any particular route forevermore, but the letters on that certificate still have a huge impact on the lives of those receiving them.
These days, students can ask for their results to be issued digitally, either by text message or email, meaning that they don’t need to wait for their postie to get around to dropping the big envelope through their front door. Thousands sign up for this service which allows them to trade hours of desperation for a more concentrated type of terror early in the morning.
But this year, something went badly wrong.
The SQA hold a briefing for journalists on the morning on results day, and while I was on my way there I started to receive messages on social media telling me about a problem with the results emails. It wasn’t that they hadn’t arrived – the issue was that they had been sent out with a big gap where the actual results information should have been.........