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A-level results day. Cue hundreds of photos of teenage girls leaping in the air and some ritual angst about what it all really means. In recent years, the focus has been on A-level grades improving. Are the exams getting easier, the children cleverer or the teaching better? This year the goalposts have shifted in the other direction with grades having fallen slightly. Have the exams have got harder, the children stupider and the teaching worse? As it happens, it’s just that the rules have changed to prevent students resitting modules in January to improve their scores. But even if there weren’t a simple explanation for the slight decline, would it really be much of a disaster?
I’m not sure that the indifference my parents and I showed to my own A-level results back in 1974 is what’s called for. Back then we returned from holiday to find my results card mixed in with all the other post on the hall floor. My mum picked it up and said, “You’ve got 2 Bs and a C.” I think I then said, “Oh. That’s about what I expected.” “Does that mean you’ve got into university?” she asked. “I think so,” I said, and that was about the end of it. There were no great fanfares: no cheers, no tears, no ringing my friends to find out what they had got. It didn’t seem that urgent. But there has to be some middle ground between that and the current fetishisation whereby students are made to feel that their whole future depends on the grades they get.
Of course A-levels are important. They are the marker of the end of secondary education for 300,000 teenagers, the culmination of 13 years in school, and for those who do well and get the grades they hoped for there is much to celebrate. They are the key to the university – and hopefully the career – of their choice. What, though, of those who don’t meet their own expectations. Are we to think they have failed? Are they to think they have failed?
It’s a no-win situation for both schools and students. Teachers can’t relax the pressure in A-level year, not least because their jobs depend on them getting good results, even if their students’ futures don’t. They can’t spend all their time in class ramming home the importance of students paying attention so that they get the best grades, while at the same time saying, “Look, if things don’t quite work out as you hope, then everything will be OK anyway.” The best a teacher can do is to try to get the most out of each student, and try to match expectations with reality. But even then there are going to be students who are desperately disappointed and feel their lives are blighted.
This isn’t an issue about passing or failing. All exams have their grading levels, and some students will do well and others will not. That is as it should be: exams are intended not just as a measure of attainment but also of differentiation. If they don’t do that, they are meaningless. The issue is the nature of that failure. This isn’t intrinsic to A-levels themselves, but is located in the value governments, society, schools and individuals invest in them.
The reality that every adult, every employer and every institution later comes to understand is that A-levels are just a small part of what shapes our future lives. People mature at different rates and their interests change. Students drop out of university. Many students go on to get jobs that have nothing to do with what they studied at university. How we are able to use the knowledge we have is often far more valuable than the knowledge itself.
Academic results are just one consideration for an employer. Personality, adaptability and ability to form relationships are just as important, if not more so. Emotional intelligence unlocks as many doors as intellectual intelligence. Even those who do get the academic results they want often don’t get the careers they want. Disappointment is part of life, something we all have to learn to deal with at some point. It’s just that on A-level results day everyone seems to forget this. A little more reflection – dare I say, self-examination – wouldn’t go amiss.
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