If reports are true, and John Swinney is planning to cancel Nat 5 exams but just mess about with the Highers, then we may well have managed the remarkable achievement of making things worse than I ever expected.

Obviously you can ignore the fringe zoomer groups like UsForThem whining about the fact that any changes at all might be made - they're only a few steps away from warning about fluoride in the WiFi anyway.

The issue isn't that some changes could be made - changes HAVE TO BE made.

The issue is the cowardice that underpins this sort of desperate tinkering when what is needed - and has been needed for months - is someone having the guts to make the right call.

The govt/entities in the system seem to have been utterly traumatised by the chaos of the 2020 results (chaos that THEY created, of course) and now have just sort of frozen.

This is, to put it mildly, a sub-optimal situation during a pandemic.

Exams categorically cannot go ahead as normal next year. Nevermind the threat of coming disruption - there has already been too much disruption for the status quo to be an option because there's absolutely no way to make it fair.

Cancelling N5 exams while allowing, or perhaps in order to allow, some sort of Higher exam is just absurd.

The proposal to have those Higher exams altered/slimmed down - months after courses started - isn't any better.

This is what happens when you have a system so resolutely focused on clinging on to the status quo: you end up going for whatever policy let's you maintain your preferred illusion no matter how daft that policy is.

When it became clear that exams couldn't go ahead last year I, and others, argued right away for the use of teacher-assessed grades.

In the end, after putting kids through horrendous anxiety, the powers that be accepted we were right.

Using teacher-assessed grades for 2020 results was the right call.

Using teacher-assessed grades for the 2021 results - this time potentially incorporating a simple, sample-based verification system - is the right call.

And it has been the right call for months.

The fact that we are even having to discuss this in September is a sign that the people in charge have utterly failed to do their jobs.

And because of that failure, and because those same people are so scared, and because this is such a conservative country, it now looks as though we're going to let pupils down all over again.

If teacher-assessed grades were reliable in 2020 why wouldn't they be reliable in 2021, when there would be plenty of time of manage the process (unlike last year)?

If teacher-assessed grades are reliable for 2021 Nat 5s, why not 2021 Highers?

The only way you could end up at these proposals is if you operate on the basis that running some sort of exam is the absolutely priority, and all things will ultimately be in service of that goal.

So cancel N5. Slice out some content. ANYTHING to be seen to be running exams.

Which leaves us exactly where I feared we'd end up: prioritising the maintenance of an unfair and unreliable system over protecting the young people who are supposed to be what matters.