My heart sank last night when I heard that mocks could be used. They would not enhance my DS's position at all. They were not all sat in exam conditions and the marking was designed to scare/motivate the students. My DS's mocks were A, C, D and his predicted grades were A, B, C. But he was doing better than that in subsequent tests. The only thing I can trust is my son's teachers' assessments as they were regularly testing and assessing him.
To be fair, he wasn't really working hard at all so its not like he's an olympic athlete who had been training for year's to prove himself! I can't imagine that he would have done much revision really. So I won't be angry or upset with the results as we have no way of guessing what he would have got. Some kids will do better some worse than expected - as in real life. I certainly won't be moaning about anyone doing better than anyone else.
I think Scotland have really fucked it up and now cast doubt on the whole of the marking system. It had some sense of solidity and objectivity before all this and now no one will believe anything that happens. When they first closed the schools I had assumed the schools would keep teaching online and that the exams would be sat online. In timed conditions it would be very hard to substantively cheat. But I guess some young people might not have the living conditions or online access to support it and that would have been unfair on them. So we are left with a system that will have little credibility yet life changing decisions for university access will be based on the grades they receive.
My DS could never do resits in September as his brain will have gone to mush after 6 months of gaming and youtube. And if he does get to go to uni they are going to have a very big task to do getting all the students back into learning mode.