Erin Bleakley was 17 when a letter dropped through her letterbox and rewrote the trajectory of her life. It was August 2020. Schools had been shuttered since March. Exams were cancelled. In their place, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) had deployed an algorithm to moderate teacher estimates — a statistical model that would ultimately downgrade 125,000 results, disproportionately punishing pupils from deprived communities. Bleakley, a straight-A student at prelim, opened her envelope to find three Bs, a C and two Ds. Her dream of veterinary medicine evaporated before she had even left the hallway.
The algorithm that failed a generation
The emergency certification model was built on haste. With no precedent for cancelling exams in over a century, the SQA asked teachers to submit estimated grades. Then, in June, the authority applied a moderation process anchored to schools’ historical performance. The logic was statistical consistency. The outcome was systemic bias. Pupils in schools with historically lower attainment saw their teachers’ judgements overruled at far higher rates than their peers in affluent areas. The data, it turned out, had baked in the very inequalities the education system claimed to dismantle.
Bleakley remembers the physical sensation. “My legs buckled beneath me,” she says. “I remember feeling I just couldn’t believe this had happened. It did not reflect anything that I’d done over the last two years.” She had never failed a class. Her father came home from work early. Her mother didn’t know what to do. Across social media, the same story repeated: aspiring medics, engineers, lawyers — all watching offers dissolve because a model said their school “didn’t usually” produce such grades.
From protest to a new path
The outrage was immediate. Bleakley organised a Facebook page. Within days, she was standing in Glasgow’s George Square, leading a protest that forced the issue onto the national agenda. A week later, John Swinney, then education secretary, stood in Holyrood and apologised for the “feeling of unfairness” — a phrase that still rankles. “Deeply regrettable we got this wrong,” he told MSPs. The government instructed the SQA to revert all downgraded results to teacher estimates.
But the damage was done. Clearing deadlines had passed. University places had been filled. Bleakley’s adjusted grades — restored to teacher estimates — still fell short of the As her prelims had promised. She pivoted to human geography. The veterinary surgery door had closed.
A career built on the flaw she lived
Today, Bleakley is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. Her research examines automated decision-making and its impact on lived experience — a direct lineage from that August morning. “I’ve kind of built my full research around making sure that communities are involved in any work that I do because of the inequality that I faced, that a lot of us faced,” she says. Her work scrutinises the same logic that downgraded her: statistical models making life-altering judgements without consulting the people they affect.
The inquiry and the unanswered questions
Later today, Fiona Robertson, the former SQA chief executive, will give evidence to the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry. Bleakley will be watching. She wants to know whether anyone from the communities most affected was consulted before the algorithm was deployed. She wants accountability — not just apology. “It has still left an impact on people to this day,” she says. “So I do think it’s important, even just for acknowledgement, to take accountability of what happened and what went wrong.”
The Scottish government maintains the pandemic created a “unique and very challenging situation.” Qualifications Scotland, the body that replaced the SQA, says it is engaging fully with the inquiry but cannot comment further while hearings are ongoing. Neither answer satisfies Bleakley.
Why it Matters
The 2020 exam scandal was not a glitch — it was a stress test that exposed how readily institutions outsource judgement to opaque models when crisis hits. Five years on, the pupils who lost places, changed courses, and internalised the message that their potential was a statistical anomaly are now adults navigating a world increasingly mediated by algorithms. Bleakley’s journey from protester to researcher embodies the stakes: when systems fail the most vulnerable, the remedy cannot be a quiet reversion to the mean. It must be structural. The inquiry’s findings will shape whether Scotland learns that lesson — or simply archives it.