A-Level Results Day
What Will The Envelope Contain?
Before you read any further there’s a disclaimer. I don’t know what the results are, and I won’t know by the end of the article either. This is simply a brief meditation on parenting and how our children live in a cruel world which we are encouraged to harden them for, by sending them into the school system where they are routinely shamed for what they do or don’t wear, the things they get wrong and whether or not they remembered to bring the right pen, or piece of P.E. kit.
I hated school. By the time I thankfully left at 16, I had probably spent more time out of it than in it because I was a dreadful truant. I got a handful of exams, and contrary to the stories that will be all over social media today along the lines of I messed up my A-levels and now I’m a Nobel prize winner, personally I became well acquainted with disappointment every time I needed to demonstrate my academic achievements for a job or education opportunity.
In the end, I returned to education as an adult, and I am still there because I love learning. Just not in school. Who knew?
Anyway, as a result I have been a parent that has been intensely interested in my children not just staying in school and education but doing the best that they can whilst they are there. And no matter what this morning’s results envelope holds, I can vouch for the fact that both my daughters have done their level best.
The curious thing is about all this, is that school system has often worked against our aspirations. All the things I hated about schools are still there, the unnecessary coercion around superficial matters, the disgusting food, the random teachers who misuse their power to humiliate, shame and in one horrible instance with my eldest literally terrify the kids in their classroom. And that’s before I even get onto the fact that my children are Black in a system that is predominantly White and run by people who presumably mean well but who still somehow overlooked getting basic cultural competencies in place for themselves and their staff.
A few years back, I watched a young person deal with the fallout from A-level results day. They had a perfectly respectable set of results, a set of results that would get them into a Russell Group university (one of the academic institutions considered to be more prestigious in the UK). Unfortunately on results day, the envelope contained results that were not quite the right combination of the first two letters of the alphabet and the young person had to watch their original plans slip away in some standard font they use to print on the results slip.
They were then catapulted headlong into a world of confusion called ‘Clearing’ where students who haven’t done well enough in their exams to proceed straight to a pool of courses that haven’t done well enough filling them with students.
It’s a bit of a crapshoot.
Kids, and I maintain 18 year olds are kids, have to make rapid decisions about accepting alternative courses at universities in towns they probably have never even visited. Some parents make this process worse because they are obsessed with Russell Group universities, or particular courses or towns or whatever. It’s horrible. I saw it in this kid’s face. The confusion, the disappointment, the pressure.
And I thought to myself that day, ‘Why do we do this to our kids? This does not create the conditions for good decisions.’
So my daughter won’t be doing that. She wants to go to university but she’s taking a gap year. She’s allowing some time for the dust to settle. If she’s disappointed with her results, and she reserves the right to be as one of the Covid cohorts, then she has some time to process that, dust herself off and recalibrate her options.
She has a firm plan to go to Italy and has a job lined up. She wants to learn a bit of Italian and have a different experience. University can wait for 12 months, and when she applies, she will already know what she has got so there’ll be none of this pressure that there is on thousands of children today who need three A grades or whatever to get to the course they have set their heart on.
Hearts are going to be broken today, mark my words. Adults who have lucked out in the end in their own lives without any ‘good’ exam results will tell us about themelves, as if we care. It’s a horrible system and for me, as a parent, this A-level results day marks the end of schools reaching into our lives since 2005.
It’s an end point of that influence which has been good in many ways, and traumatic in many others. Whatever my daughter gets today I am proud of her. We have already booked the restaurant. If she’s unhappy with the contents of the envelope we will allow her her feelings and not try to jolly her up for our own sake. If she needs space, we will give it to her. We can cancel the restaurant is she’s not in the mood.
I want her to be happy and the envelope contents have the power to go either way. I can’t do anything about that. But I can act like a well emotionally regulated adult in the middle of the hoo-haa, and I hope that at least, will help.
Recommended reading for today’s mood: the poem If by Kipling
