A string of A grades are a passport to university after a tough year for Katie Brennan and Charlotte Alexander.
The girls were among Lochgelly High School pupils and leavers celebrating success in their SQA results, delivered on Tuesday morning.
And they told Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville, who visited their Fife school, what it had been like studying for their qualifications during a pandemic, with exams cancelled and lost class time.
Katie, 18, got four As in her Highers and a B in Advanced Higher and is bound for Edinburgh University to study medical science.
She told us meeting her university place conditions made “all the hard work worth it”.
The impact of the pandemic, including restrictions in certain subjects, had made it a hard year, she said.
“For the sciences all my practical work was stopped, so for two years I’ve had no practical work at all.
“It got quite stressful when we had to self-isolate but our teachers were great at keeping us up to date and keeping us in touch.
“There was so much support available for us as well. It reduced the stress a lot and we were made to feel really confident in what we were doing and where we were going.”
Charlotte, 18, got As in one Advanced Higher and two Highers, and two Bs at Advanced Higher level. She is headed for Strathclyde University to study pharmacy.
Proud to have fulfilled her university conditions, she said: “Coming from doing my Nat 5s with proper exams and then doing last year and this year, it’s definitely been a lot more stressful but the teachers were amazing at supporting you.
“I think we really all learned to be resilient, manage to get through things and work in different ways than we would normally.
“It was definitely a tough year but I think we all managed.”
Fellow pupils Katie Wilson, Mason Smith and Beth Adam were also celebrating impressive marks.
Nationwide the proportion of young people achieving passes in National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers is down on last year – when exams were cancelled for the first time – but up substantially on pre-Covid years.
Congratulating the Lochgelly candidates and others across Scotland, Ms Somerville said: “This is a very, very strong set of results and a testimony to the hard work and resilience of our young people that they have demonstrated that so well under the most difficult of circumstances.
“To see record numbers of passes at Higher level and record numbers of passes at Advanced Higher is fantastic work for them.”
As well as learning at home for the first few weeks of this year, many young people, she said, had lost more class time self-isolating.
She added: “That whole worry and stress that young people were going through was something that was exceptionally difficult for them and difficult for the staff who were supporting them.
Teachers who had assessed pupils’ work and submitted their grades to the Scottish Qualifications Authority had, she said, “ensured a fair and credible system” this year.
Lochgelly High School rector Debbie Aitken said she was “exceptionally proud” of pupils’ achievements.
She said: “It’s been a challenging year as you can imagine, the last eight weeks of term in particular, gathering the evidence, the teachers working to support the young people.
“I’m just really proud of all the young people, proud of the staff and relieved that we’ve got there in the end.”
