It is simply wrong to downgrade young people in schools just because their school results from previous years didn't match up. There are many reasons why results change and for SQA to do this without speaking to schools is a disgrace.

Challenges around staffing (something that has been well documented in recent years) can effect results. We'd be expecting to see improvements in results with the focus on closing the poverty related attainment gap and all the strategies in place for this.

Given SQA could see that the 'downgrading' was more significant in our areas with greater poverty you'd have thought it wouldn't have been beyond them to speak to the teachers in these schools as part of the moderation process.

Now when our teachers should be focussed on working towards the next round of qualifications their efforts will be diverted to providing the evidence for the appeals to support their pupils. Evidence which SQA need to be taking seriously.

I hate hearing about exams - we have a qualification system which has exams as a part of the whole. Exams work for some and not for others much in the same way as continuous assessment works for some and not others (particularly if you're minded to leave it all and cram)

This year's qualifications was based on teacher judgement backed by in school evidence which contained prelim exams. They are as valid as any other year and SQA should be looking at their processes. I repeat it is wrong to punish pupils for the results of previous years.