Nicola Sturgeon has said that she is "sorry" and admitted that the Scottish Government "did not get this right" in response to the protests surrounding the SQA exam results for pupils this year.
Speaking at the daily government briefing this afternoon, the First Minister noted that the Government "took decisions that we thought on balance were the right ones and we took them with the very best of intentions" amid what is a "very difficult and unprecedented situation".
But in attempting to make sure that the "grades young people got were as valid as those they would have got in any other year" it "perhaps led us to think too much about the overall system and not enough about the individual pupil", she admitted.
As a result, "too many students feel that they lost out on grades that they should have had... and also that has happened as a result of not of anything they have done but because of a statistical model or an algorithm and in addition that burden has not fallen equally across our society".
To which Ms Sturgeon noted, "so despite our best intentions I do acknowledge that we did not get this right and I am sorry for that".
The First Minister also noted that she and the Scottish Government "are determined to acknowledge that and to put it right".
She said: "There are of course deeper questions that we will need to resolve for the longer term about the impact of exams on the attainment gap and on the difference between exams and teacher judgement but the most immediate challenge is to resolve the grades awarded to pupils this year.
"Let me be clear that we will not expect every student who has been downgraded to appeal. This situation is not the fault of students and so it should not be on the students to fix it. That's on us.
"And we will set out tomorrow exactly how we intend to do that".
Education Secretary John Swinney will make a statement in Parliament tomorrow about the steps the Scottish Government intend to take to address concerns about this years results.
And Ms Sturgeon finished by confirming that "at the heart we will be taking step to ensure that every young person gets a grade that recognises the work they have done."
