Nicola Sturgeon has insisted there is no need for "fresh leadership" in Scotland's education system.
The First Minister spoke the day after it was announced the permanent secretary in the UK's Department for Education (DfE) was stepping down.
The DfE said the departure of Jonathan Slater was necessary because "the Prime Minister has concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership".
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Sturgeon said that in Scotland ministers had taken responsibility for the results fiasco, while in England she claimed that "civil servants have been left to carry the can".
News of Slater's departure comes after Sally Collier resigned from her role as head of England's exams regulator Ofqual – with Education Secretary Gavin Williamson denying forcing her out.
Scotland suffered a similar scandal to that in England, with more than 124,000 results downgraded during a controversial moderation process, which was introduced after Covid-19 forced the scrapping of exams.
Protests forced both the First Minister and the Education Secretary John Swinney to apologise, with amended grades eventually being withdrawn and teacher estimates reinstated.
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Asked at her daily coronavirus briefing if there was a "need for fresh leadership in Scotland too" following the controversy, Sturgeon insisted: "No, I don't think there is.
"I have stood here, I have taken responsibility for what we got wrong with the exams and apologised to young people and their parents and we put it right.
"That is the position. We took responsibility as ministers, I as First Minister, the Education Secretary, we chose not to do what has been done in England, where civil servants have been left to carry the can and ministers have tried to say it is not their responsibility.
"We didn't do that. That is our decision and it is for other governments to take decisions of their own.
"We take our own decisions on these matters here in Scotland and what the UK Government does is for them to explain and set out and give a rationale for."
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