Exam results - 'They deserve answers and an apology'

Every year when it comes to exam results time, there invariably seems to be one kind of controversy or another.

This year sees the return to centre stage of the Midlothian-based SQA, which inadvertently sent out results 24 hours early to thousands of pupils who registered to get theirs sent by text.

Unfortunately for the agency, this blunder has had the unfortunate effect of bringing back memories of the fiasco 11 years ago, when it delivered many results either late, incomplete or just plain wrong.

This year's slip-up - though clearly embarrassing and unacceptable - is on nothing like the same scale.

In fact, many of the students on the receiving end of the texts that should never have been sent out yesterday will have been delighted. Getting their results a day earlier than expected will have saved them a fretful, sleepless night.

Others, though, will have been caught upsettingly on the hop, perhaps receiving bad news on their own instead of with family or friends. They deserve answers as to how something so basic was allowed to go wrong and a fulsome apology.

The fact that exam results appear to have again improved year on year in Edinburgh risks being overshadowed by the mistake - but that would be wrong.

That in itself will not be without its controversy. The inevitable questions will be asked about whether standards are improving or exams being dumbed down.

Now, though, is not the time for that debate. Today we should be satisfied with congratulating the thousands of Lothian students, and their teachers, who have achieved outstanding results. This is their day and they richly deserve it.

In the open

There has never been a greater need for transparency in the way public money is spent than there is today with spending cuts starting to bite.

The taxi bills run up by city councillors are a great example of how things can improve when they are put under the spotlight of public scrutiny. The cost to the public purse today is now little more than ten per cent of what it was just six years ago when councillors were spending 14,000 a year on cabs.

The fact the News was able to obtain the full facts and figures and lay them before council tax payers clearly played a part in this dramatic turnaround. It is just a shame that there was no such transparency with the trams project, allowing those in charge to deny for so long how badly wrong things had gone, rather than putting things right.