Let’s not kid ourselves that A level exams don’t matter - Christa Ackroyd

It would be so easy for me to write a column about how this week’s exam results don’t define you. How school days are not the best days of your life...or if they are then you haven’t been lucky enough to find a more fulfilling role. Exams matter. They are a means to an end towards the next chapter in your journey, far more than they were in our day. Without them too often our young people are defined as failures. Even though they are not. And if anyone chimes in to say exams were a lot harder in their day, you are wrong. I have seen the exam questions.

It’s just that then it was easy to brush off any lack of success in them and still make your mark. Failing them or at least deciding further education was not for you has even become something of a boast from some of our most successful celebs and entrepreneurs. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both dropped out of university and became billionaires. Virgin boss Richard Branson left school at 16 to start a business. I think he did ok for himself. Alan Sugar didn’t go to university and is worth £1.4bn.

Jeremy Clarkson reminded us this year, as he does every year, that he got a C and two unclassifieds, sharing a picture of him holidaying on a luxury boat. Jo Malone, she who launched a thousand candles that let’s face it if you haven’t earned more than a few bob you can’t afford, often tells students she doesn’t have a single qualification.

But these tales of success despite lack of qualifications are absolutely pointless. In my day, as in theirs, you could leave school at 16. A few years earlier, it was actually 15. Now whether our young people like it or not they have to be in some kind of education or training until they are 18. So what they do with those years matters. Any wasted year is a travesty whether you are 18 or 80.

And gloating about failure from celebrities who have ‘ made it’ despite not passing many is not an option. Yes, it’s true exam results don’t define you in later life, but they sure as hell help you on your way. Our young people don’t need to be reminded by a handful of well-heeled showbiz types that they didn’t need them. They didn’t. But the world of education is very different now.

In my day – oh how I hate that phrase – you didn’t need to go to university and if you did, it was free and you got a grant to help you live while you studied. Even so less than 50 per cent of my sixth-form actually went, including me. I never even thought about it. I was lucky enough to be paid by my employer to study three months of the year away at college during my indentures in a job I always wanted to do and didn’t need to go to university to study for. Instead I played at being a student in the comfort of my bed and breakfast in Ecclesall Road in Sheffield and drove into my lectures.

The rest of the time I was able to put into practice all I had learned and got a wage for doing so. But do I wish I had gone to university? Yes I do. The joy of being able to learn something in depth I have come to realise too late is a gift and is hard fought for by so many of our young people today, who know they will come out deep in debt for the privilege. Once upon a time, many moons ago, before the phrase media studies had even been invented, there were many jobs including my own that did not require a degree. Now there are more that do.

Of course, there are apprenticeships which don’t. And they are a wonderful alternative to university and a potentially lucrative one. You try getting a plumber, a joiner, a builder, a decorator who isn’t booked up to the hilt and earning a good living and you will see my point. But even they have to study these days, which is why the news that 92 per cent passed the brand new T-levels, a technical equivalent to three A-levels, bodes well for the future.

The fact of the matter is that for 425,000 young people this week their exams mattered. That’s the number of people who will be going to university this year and have got the grades they needed to do so. That is a huge commitment from each and every one of them towards their future and ours and, let’s face it, the future of the entire country. So let us not kid ourselves that exams don’t matter. We may have got away with it but this generation cannot.

Headlines screaming exam grades down this year don’t help either. They are down a whopping two per cent and only then in comparison to the teacher assessed grades of the Covid years, so they didn’t massively over inflate them then did they? And while we are on the subject of the pandemic, let us remember these youngsters were the same ones who had to suffer the major disruption of online learning, too...and still they came up trumps.

So well done to every one of them. Enjoy your next adventure. Your results this week won’t define you, that’s for sure, but they will certainly set you well on the way towards that exciting journey called life. And the joy is it’s only just beginning. To the mums weeping with happiness one minute then crying the next that their baby is all grown up and will soon be leaving home, don’t worry they’ll soon be back with their washing. And at least their bedroom will stay tidy until they do.