They didn’t happen due to full lockdown that shut the schools. A levels are decided by a single exam in May/June after two years of study. University starts in

They didn’t happen due to full lockdown that shut the schools. A levels are decided by a single exam in May/June after two years of study. University starts in September and university places are offered based upon estimates of the grade an individual will get. This happens early in the year Jan/Feb time and is called a “conditional offer”. Those who don’t get the grades in the exam in August to satisfy the conditional offer go into a system called “Clearing” to see what other University courses are still available. The estimates Universities use come from two sources. Either the teachers just vouch for a set of grades, or the school runs a set of test exams called “Mocks” in Nov/December and the grades from them are the estimates. Covid threw a huge wrench in the works of this Byzantine system. The problem is that mocks and the actual results have been drifting apart for years, with the universities compensating course by course. The Ivory Tower technocrats genuinely believed they could impose an algorithmic correction top down and everybody would just accept it. They have had a rude awakening to the political reality - yet again.