Not sure what the equivalent is outside the UK, but A Levels are the exams at the end of school and used to determine of you have the necessary grade for univer

Not sure what the equivalent is outside the UK, but A Levels are the exams at the end of school and used to determine of you have the necessary grade for university. If you don't get the required grades, you don't go to university. The problem is that due to lockdown, no one sat the exams. So they kind of guessed what the grades should be based on predicted grades from teachers or the grades assigned by mock exams. However, those awarding the grades felt that predicted grades were too optimistic and there is no standardisation for mock exams between subjects at the same school, let alone multiple schools across the country. What the exam boards seem to have done (and I don't think they've admitted to this) is moderate the grades based on past results from the school. However, schools in poorer areas traditionally do worse, so students in those areas lost anywhere from 1 to 3 grades, e.g. an A becomes a D. This includes students that never had a D at any point in the past. So then the government said students could appeal. Then they said exam grades would be adjusted back to no lower than their predicted grades. Or they could resit them once lockdown ended. Meanwhile university places are filling up based on the first set of grades. Some universities are doing better, notably one of the Oxford colleges who decided to honour all offers made on the basis that they have no new information to change their offer on. But those that didn't apply to these universities have to go through clearing but still don't know what their grades are. Universities need to confirm places for accomodation which is also filling up fast. To call it a catastrophe isn't far off the mark.