At 2am on Sunday, I received an email from a secondary student highlighting a TikTok post “discussing the content of any exam imaginable”. I downloaded TikTok and easily found the video.

It lasted just a couple of seconds. A floppy-haired teenager sat looking bored, with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) logo in the background. Words flashed up: “Listen up”, followed by, “For anyone taking Higher human biology”. Then two essay questions followed.

But that was the least of it. Below the post - in what ultimately amounted to 4,000-plus comments - everything from the N5 art exam to the Advanced Higher physics and chemistry exams was being discussed as students pleaded for information and had their questions answered.

One comment read: “You realise we are all sitting different tests”, but someone responded that “schools are doing the 2020 official SQA ones”. Another contributor aptly branded the thread “the SQA black market”.

Tes Scotland approached the SQA for comment on Sunday morning, and by Sunday night the video had disappeared; on Monday afternoon, the SQA was emailing schools to advise that “appropriate penalties should be applied” if cases of “candidate malpractice” are identified.

The horse, however, had already bolted. The video was up for over 24 hours, had thousands of comments and had been liked 12,000 times - but many more will have watched it.

So, why does this matter?

Firstly, because some students will now have an unfair advantage, but also because it’s not yet clear what impact this will have on how the SQA will now perceive evidence for grades based on the unused 2020 exam papers. These were shared with schools on the SQA’s secure website so that they could be used “as internal assessments for gathering candidate evidence”.

The SQA has said that, this year, it is “the quality of evidence which is critical, rather than quantity”. But if students know the questions before they sit an assessment, what does that do to its perceived quality? And will students - who are already facing huge amounts of testing - now face even more because these papers are deemed null and void?

Responding to a Tes Scotland article about the breach, opposition politicians warned we are “gearing up for exam shambles part two”: the idea that the 2020 exams fiasco could be followed by something even worse is gaining traction.

Undoubtedly, last week’s Scottish Parliament election meant the “alternative certification model” has not had the scrutiny it deserves of late. Politicians who have a handle on the issues, such as the Greens’ Ross Greer, have been busy campaigning; others, such as Labour’s former education spokesperson Iain Gray, have retired.

The Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee was instrumental in holding the SQA to account - but it had its last meeting on 24 March, and the new Parliament sat for the first time only yesterday.

This year, the National Qualifications 2021 Group is dictating how pupils will be assessed, and its members include the SQA as well as headteachers’ representatives, education directors and Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS.

Now the SQA has created “a limited opportunity” to submit results by 3 September for students who have been “unduly disadvantaged by severe disruption to learning and teaching”.

The SQA has also made it clear that “gathering evidence should not be solely based on one-off, high-stakes scenarios”. However, schools opting for assessments akin to exams say they are doing it to make time for learning and teaching and to spare their students the pressure of multiple mini exams. When the national SQA exams were cancelled on 8 December, few would have anticipated that, five months later, there would still be so much confusion over whether exams were - or should be - taking place.

Meanwhile, the student who contacted me about TikTok sat their Higher English essay this week. The questions they faced were the ones shared on social media and that they went public with because, in their words, “now that questions are leaked it gives some people, including myself, an unfair advantage”.

That is just one qualifications conundrum that needs to be addressed urgently. Seamus Searson, general secretary of Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, said this week that there was still time to make the awarding of qualifications work in some form this year - but the clock is ticking.

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

This article originally appeared in the 14 May 2021 issue under the headline “Scottish schools top UK ‘rich list’ - but it doesn’t feel like that on the ground”