What was all the fuss about last year?

The short answer, following an inquiry and acres of press coverage, is "not as much as we had thought".

Over recent years, critics have said A-levels are being "dumbed down", with grades continuing to rise.

Last autumn, it was reported that some candidates had had their work downgraded, in an effort to prevent such complaints.

Following this, the grades of 100,000 final-year A-level students were re-examined. However, just 1,220 - all originally awarded by the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR) board - were eventually raised.

An inquiry run by the former chief inspector of schools in England, Mike Tomlinson, concluded that the government had brought in changes to A-levels too quickly.

It had not piloted the A2 section - the second year of study - before the A-level was split into two parts in 2000.

This had resulted in an unclear definition of standards, giving exam boards too much leeway, the inquiry found.

So, genuine concerns were raised, but the number of students proved to have been adversely affected was not as huge as had been reported.

Did all this uncertainty lead to a surge in appeals against results?

Perhaps surprisingly, no.

As a percentage of the number of entries, appeals were down from 2.7% to 1.6% last year. Of these, fewer than one in 10 resulted in a grade being changed.

By far the biggest proportion of appeals involved OCR - the board at the centre of the row about grading.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), which monitors exams in England, said the Tomlinson review had covered the concerns of many people who might otherwise have lodged appeals.

But the QCA's chief executive, Ken Boston, said he feared a big rise in appeals this year, because of concerns raised about the whole system.

He has asked the exam boards to make contingency plans to cope with a sudden rush of inquiries.

What is the outlook for the reliability of this year's grades?

Mr Boston has said any smooth delivery of exam results would have to come "by good management rather than by luck, and by a hair's breadth".

A critic of what he describes as "cottage industry" marking by teachers, he does not foresee an exact repeat of last year's problems. But he has not ruled out "another episode".

Mr Boston presented the situation starkly: "We have a 21st-Century, internationally celebrated qualification - the A-level - underpinned by an antiquated delivery system in which teachers 'moonlight' as markers and are paid piece rates, and 24 million scripts move about the country at the whim of the Post Office."

However, he said the required standards and the awarding process were now clearer than last year.

Should anything else be done?

Mr Boston, and thousands of students unsure as to the value or accuracy of their A-level grades, certainly think so.

Various schemes have been mooted. Among these are the introduction of centralised exam-marking centres and computerised, paperless marking.

The government has also spent an extra �6m on markers, in an effort to reduce the burden on the system.

Mr Tomlinson is currently engaged in another inquiry, this time into the entire future of education for 14 to 19 year olds in England.

So far, he has advocated a variety of assessment methods, which would culminate, for the brightest, in a single diploma at 18 or 19. This means separate GCSEs and A-levels might not even exist in 10 years' time.