It was the silence that I found most unsettling. The soft squeak of the invigilator’s shoes. The rustle as students turned to the next page of the exam paper. The occasional gasp of disbelief at what they found there.

The pressure of Highers was immense – far greater than anything I‘ve faced in university or in professional life. This is because they are, or were, genuinely life-changing events. Your entire future could turn on those few days in May.

Why should we expect hormone-ravaged students to be on top form, or any form, on an arbitrary spring day? What if they’re under the weather, had a family bereavement, had a bad night’s sleep? Competitive exams do seem to be the worst forms of assessment – and many in the teaching profession have been saying that we should use the Covid crisis to get rid of them once and for all.

But it’s proving extremely difficult to replace the damned things. Highers and National 5s have been suspended two years running and teacher-based assessment has turned out to be, if anything, worse.

Last year, exams were replaced by school-based grades moderated by an algorithm to ensure standardisation and fairness across schools. It is well attested that teachers, for understandable reasons, are inclined to overmark their own students. However,the algorithm nearly cost the then-Education Secretary John Swinney his job. Parents were furious at seeing 124,000 results being marked down by artificial intelligence.

Algorithmic standardisation was abruptly dropped in favour of teacher-based assessment. This led, inevitably, to grade inflation: up 14 per cent for Highers and 10% for National 5s. And to much soul-searching for those teachers who had fought against their natural inclination to give their own charges beatified grades.

I’m sure Nicola Sturgeon would love to claim last year’s stellar results as a sign her policies are working. But they are not. The class of 2020 will have to live with the stigma of being the year of unreliable grades.

You might have thought that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Qualifications Aurhority would have moved heaven and earth to avoid a similar catastrophe this year. But the new Education Secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, has managed to concoct an even more convoluted farrago.

Students are to be graded on the basis of their teachers’ assessments. Fine. But teachers were told they had to use SQA- approved tests conducted under “closed book conditions” to inform their assessments. This led to pupils, or “learners” as the SQA now calls them, sitting more exams than ever before – over 20 in many cases. Exam stress was massively increased. GPs have reported an explosion in mental health problems.

To mollify parents, Ms Somerville invited parents to appeal if they “disagreed” with the results. This pitted them against schools as well as the SQA. Parents care passionately about their children’s welfare and will do almost anything to help them get ahead. And in a system shot through with anomalies and unfairness,who can blame them?

But Ms Somerville saw this coming and announced that pushy parents with sharp elbows risked having their child’s grades downgraded.

No algorithm or objective criteria have been offered for this punishment grading. It will presumably be based on the arbitrary prejudice of some anonymous functionary in the bowels of the SQA.

Except, of course, that the agency is to be “reformed” in another act of incomprehensible academic vandalism. The SQA may well deserve the chop. But to announce this just as it is about to conduct this highly sensitive grading exercise seems foolhardy. What investment will these condemned functionaries have in delivering a satisfactory outcome?

Ms Somerville, an eager social justice warrior, has also said that appeals can be based on “breaches of the Equalities Act”. Cue appeals from minority groups claiming that they have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic and suffered discrimination as a result of white privilege.

This is a minefield. If I were Ms Somerville I’d be consulting my lawyers because pushy parents are already consulting theirs. They will not allow their children to be arbitrarily downgraded just for registering an appeal.

Some schools have been allowing students to resit their “non-exams” if their marks seem on the low side. According to the educationalist Professor Lindsay Paterson of Edinburgh University, this multiple testing has been widespread given the confused and often contradictory advice from SQA. He is withering in his contempt for the failure in national leadership in education.

Teachers are naturally tempted to award flattering grades on the grounds that, since most pupils have had precious little serious teaching during lockdown, it is hardly fair to expect them to have learned anything.

This is a recipe for chaos and unfairness. It is hard to know what learners are supposed to have learned. Anyway, under the Curriculum for Excellence, education is supposed to be about fostering creativity and good citizenship. Many students are furthering these noble objectives by exchanging SQA-authorised assessment papers on social media for the benefit of all.

Scottish education was in a bad way before Covid struck. Faltering in international educational league tables like PISA and with a persistent attainment gap between rich and poor. The Curriculum for Excellence has been widely criticised as a vague set of worthy aspirations rather than a workable educational programme. The Scottish Government’s handling of the pandemic crisis has magnified all of these issues. Parents are furious after two years of exam chaos.

Some form of standardised assessment is essential for an education system worthy of the name. We can’t accept a situation where performance judged to be A+ in one region is marked B- in another. To ensure fairness in qualifications, students must have a sense that there is a level educational playing field.

But it hardly seems possible now to return to the old exam-based system. Teachers and parents have lost confidence in it. Pupils mostly hate exams. Yet there seems little agreement about what should replace competitive exams. Continuous assessment turns out to be continuous testing and perma-stress. Teacher-awarded grades are too subjective and open to abuse and contestation.

Perhaps Scotland will give up on competitive qualifications altogether. Just hand everyone who has attended class a pass and give all graduates prizes for being first equal. Many in the teaching unions would be quite happy with that since it removes the burden of judgment from their members. Competition is anyway regarded as inherently bad.

However, international bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development might not be overly impressed with this abdication of educational responsibility. Its report on the Curriculum for Excellence is sitting like an unexplored bomb on Ms Somerville’s desk. That it is not exactly a ringing endorsement may be inferred from from the fact that she has delayed publication until June 21– the very end of the parliamentary term when MSPs’ minds are already on holiday.

But when they come back they will likely find parents and learners in revolt. The SQA will be no more, which means there will be no-one to blame but the minister herself. Ms Somerville’s return to Cabinet may be short lived.