A frequent complaint we hear about this year's A-level and GCSE results is that they somehow 'don't count' and are not worth the same as the hard-earned marks gained by their forebears in pre-pandemic times.

It's hard not to conclude this is the usual "kids today have it easy" complaint given a 2021 respray.

Whether the people who say it realise it or not, the message most people take away from this is that the young people who got those grades don't deserve them, and that the teachers marking them have gone soft and are not to be trusted.

Nobody seems to question whether things should have been corrected higher up.

It's worth remembering that last year's exam results were initially determined by an algorithm that arbitrarily marked down anyone, however clever they were, from an area with poorly performing schools.

This same mistake had been made and U-turned on a week earlier in Scotland, so nobody could say they weren't warned.

The Government - there is a department dedicated to education - has had a year to come up with a solution.

Teachers and pupils have got on with teaching and learning, with the autumn's rising cases, a new variant and a second lockdown coming in the middle of the school year.

Those pupils will still have to put those results on their CVs and compete for jobs and university places with them, so they really do count.

It has not been easy and the results will not be perfect, but anyone looking to knock pupils and blame teachers working in unprecedented conditions needs to develop their argument more and must try harder.