It feels as if things are coming to a head. Over the past 12 months, this has become a very familiar sensation - and, this time, it’s all about how qualifications will be assessed and evidenced this year.

Last year, the entire process was done remotely but seven months of uninterrupted schooling had proceeded it and, by Friday 20 March, when schools closed to almost all pupils for the first time in the pandemic, exam season was almost upon us.

This year has been entirely different. National qualification courses, which usually start in June, had to start online - and then, when schools did go back in August, face-to-face teaching was interrupted by periods of illness and self-isolation for many teachers and students. 

This time, the lockdown and the move to online learning have been a reality for two months.

There is, though, the tantalising prospect of pupils being able to return to school soon - and that is what the government and the National Qualifications 2021 Group is counting on to make the alternative certification model that has replaced the exams work. 

But, as many parents of P1-3 pupils are already discovering, that return could be short-lived. Today marks the end of the second week back for P1-3 pupils in Scotland, but some children are already back at home, learning remotely, after Covid-19 cases in their schools. 

So, if all pupils are back in some way from the week beginning Monday 15 March (the new plan, after Nicola Sturgeon’s statement on Tuesday), how much worse can we expect this to be for the senior secondary students, given that the data shows Covid cases are more common in their sector than in primaries?

Even the best-case scenario is worrying because it will mean young people - many of whom have been struggling during lockdown - will arrive back in school to find that they are running a gauntlet of assessment. 

Then, this week, in steps the EIS teaching union with a radical solution that would undoubtedly relieve the pressure: cancelling qualifications for S4 students who are planning to stay on in school.

The EIS argued, in a submission to the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee, that such a cancellation would be “a way of alleviating the extreme pressure on the whole system at this time”. 

It pointed out that, for students staying on in school, “attainment in S5/6 supersedes that obtained in S4” and is not needed for “onward progression into S5”. 

The move would take almost an entire cohort out of the mix, since just 11.4 per cent of students who left school last year were in S4.

It also brings to mind one of the original aims of Curriculum for Excellence, which was to get rid of the “two-term dash” to Higher. The vision was that students who would ultimately end up taking Highers should step off the qualifications ladder and spend S4 and S5 working towards them, so that they could benefit from a richer, less frenetic experience.

But the concern about this approach has always been that it takes away the safety net provided by the Nationals. It also feels too deep into 2020-21 to suddenly tell a year group - many of whom have been working hard in incredibly difficult circumstances - that they won’t be getting any qualifications this year.

Then again, the past year has been full of down-to-the-wire dilemmas and, as the pressure builds on teachers now that we have stepped into spring, they are becoming more forceful in their demands that the government do something about it. 

What will the path towards qualifications (or lack thereof) ultimately look like? Surely, as the Easter holidays race over the horizon, it will become far clearer. But, given all the twists and turns of the past 12 months, let’s be wary of firm predictions.

Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland