NICOLA Sturgeon has said she would “very possibly” have protested against the SQA if she was a teenager.

Hundreds of furious pupils are expected to attend a demonstration in Glasgow’s George Square today as anger at this year’s exam results continues to grow.

Figures released earlier this week revealed that kids who go to schools in poorer areas were twice as likely to have been penalised by the SQA as those in richer parts of Scotland.

Erin Bleakley, who has organised the protest said pupils living in areas of high deprivation deserved “the same life chances as young people in affluent areas.”

The 17-year-old, who attends St Andrew’s high school in Carntyne, Glasgow, which earlier this year was identified as being the second-most deprived area in the country, said it would be impossible to close the attainment gap when “hard work can be wiped out based on your postcode”.

With Scotland’s exams cancelled, pupils grades this year were based on the judgements of their teachers.

However, all of those predicted marks had to be vetted by the SQA’s national system of “moderation”.

Controversially, the exams body looked at each school’s previous history of results. Traditionally, schools in areas of deprivation have fared worse at exams than their more affluent counterparts.

In total, of the 133,000 entries adjusted from the initial teachers estimate, 93.1% were adjusted down.

Those students in the lowest percentile of the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation – students in Scotland’s most deprived areas – had their Higher pass rate reduced by 15.2%, while students in the least deprived areas had their rate reduced by just 6.9%.

At the regular coronavirus briefing, the First Minister was asked if she would have joined the protest as a teenager.

At Sturgeon’s old school, Greenwood Academy, just 23% of pupils leave with five or more highers.

The First Minister told reporters that it was “very possible” she would have marched against the SQA when she was at school.

Sturgeon said she knew how “really horrible this will be for young people that are in this position.”

“And if I was standing here, and saying, well, ‘tough, that’s it, just accept it’, then that anger would quite rightly be even greater but I’m not saying that.”

The First Minister said this year, more than ever before, the appeals process would play an important role.

Speaking directly to young people watching the briefing, Sturgeon said: “If you’re sitting there right now, and you’re thinking, for example, I got 90% of in my prelim for the subject, but I’ve only been given a B, that will be looked at, not in some statistical way but on your individual merit.

“And if you have been treated unfairly that will be rectified through this process. Now, again, I wish you didn’t have to go through that. But I come back to the point that it’s just inescapable.

“We had faced a situation this year, where because of the pandemic, everything’s been turned upside down. So we’ve had to put in place a different system of assessing young people’s performance and, while I absolutely understand the concerns about the system that has been used, I think whatever system had been used to do this to substitute for the exams would have led some people to think it wasn’t fair.”

Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie said these were “empty words”.

“It’s not good enough for her to tell heartbroken pupils and teachers across the country that she sympathises.

“She was warned that the SQA’s approach risked this outcome and ignored those warnings. I’ll be joining the young people protesting in Glasgow tomorrow, demanding that a ‘no detriment’ policy be implemented in the appeals process as an absolute minimum,” he added.

Meanwhile, SQA chief examining officer, Fiona Robertson is due to face questions from a Holyrood committee next Wednesday.

The committee’s deputy convener Daniel Johnson said the body’s lack of clarity had “delivered a real injustice” to teachers and students.