Kirsty Williams, the one competent education secretary in the UK

It's been a hell of a couple of weeks for exam students. Highers and A level results play a huge role in determining the course of your life. If you don't get the grades you need to fulfil your aspirations, you have to rethink your whole life. And you will carry those grades around for your whole life.

The question of whether we should have a system that puts so much stress on our young people is up for debate, but that's for another day.

We know, though, that there are clear differences between the nations of the UK. In Scotland and England, the whole thing has been a disaster. However, in Wales, our Kirsty Williams has presided over a system that she argues has credibility because it guarantees that AS level results from last year will be the minimum grade for this year. That is a system that was scrapped by one Michael Gove in England.

Kirsty Williams the Lib Dem Education Secretary for Wales sais, "Because we have maintained a system whereby AS-levels forms a significant proportion of a final A-level grade, we were able to us that in the moderation process and able to put in a safety net for students so they could not drop below their previous AS Level grade."The ability to do that has been very helpful, because those were exams which were set, taken in the same conditions and were externally assessed."That can give students, universities and employers real confidence in them".She also cast doubt on the validity of giving grades based on mock exams,"Some schools don't do mock examinations," Ms Williams explained."Some use mock examinations as a way to boost confidence and deliver them in a way that perhaps they are there to encourage people."Other schools use them as a tool of encouragement in the other way, they will mark them really hard so that people don't get complacent."Each school has a different approach which we believe is right for them.

And journalists are recognising that in Wales things are better than in the rest of the UK. Stephen Bush said in the I "It is able to criticise both Swinney and Williamson because in Wales, where Labour is coalition with the Liberal Democrats, students and parents are not angrily telling television cameras that they want the education minister - in this case, the Liberal Democrat Kirsty Williams - to resign or to fix the problem. Quite the reverse: yesterday morning, a group of children actually thanked Williams live on air. What has the Welsh Government done differently?

. Following the cancellation of exams, the underestimated have been given no opportunity to correct the record and some children, correctly estimated, will have their grades downgraded from what they would have got in normal times. Others will get better grades than they otherwise would. But in Wales, the situation "feels" fairer because students are being marked not only on their teachers' assessments and the performance of their school in the past, but with their GCSE coursework and AS-Level grades being taken into account.

Williams has gone so far as to say that these performances will act as a backstop, with no child left with a worse grade at A-level than at AS-level. Welsh children have been given the opportunity to at least partially shape their own destinies and write their own futures."