By many measures, 2026 was a good year for exam results: pass rates slightly increased, the attainment gap between rich and poor slightly declined, and we got through the whole thing without any displays of incompetence from the exam board.

But there are plenty of caveats.

Those pass-rate attainment gaps are still higher than they were during the pre-pandemic period of 2016-2019, and they are of course massively higher than they were in 2020, when COVID forced the powers that be to allow a much fairer system to be put in place.

In one year without high-stakes, one-off, end-of-year exams, attainment gaps were more than cut in half, opening up opportunities to young people who always deserved them, but had them withheld. Presumably those from the poorest areas will just have to wait until the next pandemic before getting that sort of fairness again.

But the pass rate gap between the most and least deprived students isn’t the only one we can see in the data. In some ways, it might not even be the most important one.

Read more from Lessons to Learn

As well as data on the total percentage of pupils passing each course – which means achieving an A, B, or C grade – the exam board also releases information on how many students gain each individual grade.

At National 5, 27.4% of grades to those from the poorest........

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