This A-level results day, it’s time to apologise to young people for what we’ve put them through

Congratulations to all of today’s school leavers, who will spend today collecting their A-level results and then, if you’re anything like me, drinking cheap cider in a park somewhere. Enjoy that Frosty Jack’s – you earned it.

That might be truer this year than it ever has been. When I graduated, I remember the adults in my life joking that the “hard part” was finally over, as if things like careers and taxes and divorces didn’t exist. But for the 2024 cohort, the hard part really might be over.

These guys have really been through it over the past couple of years. Political strife, the mismanagement of our education system, a literal apocalyptic event. It’s a miracle any of them are graduating at all – and it’s some kind of super-miracle that they’re achieving grades that outstrip not just last year’s, but are above pre-pandemic levels. Next time you think about how much you hated school, just consider the fact that these kids pretty much lived through the end of the world and it somehow made them even smarter.

That’s not to discount the impact of the pandemic – distance learning irrevocably disrupted our children’s education. Imagine having to do the most critical learning of your life on a cheap laptop with spotty wi-fi. School is hard enough even when you don’t have to worry about a poor internet connection robbing you of the Pythagorean Theorem.

And that’s not even considering the social aspect – picture the most boring geography class you’ve ever sat through, and now imagine you couldn’t even blow off steam with your friends in the cafeteria at lunchtime. No wonder their mental health is shot to hell.

A-levels results are important (no matter what Jeremy Clarkson tweets about them every year). They dictate where you go to university – or even whether you go to university – and if you’re the kind of person who peaked in college you might even spend the rest of your life bragging about them.

That importance certainly doesn’t seem to have been lost on students, who seem to have been scared off taking humanities subjects like history and English literature in favour of a narrower range of more “employable” choices. As somebody who was lifted out of poverty by his English degree, that seems like a false economy, but I can see why kids think it’s the way to go after living most of their lives under the anti-intellectual, money-above-personal-growth mindset of the previous administration. Oh well, it’s not like we need culture.

The issues aren’t just confined to the intellectual sphere – our young people have also been placed in literal, physical peril over the course of their education. This year heatwaves caused certain classrooms to breach the recommended maximum temperature, with some reaching as high as 29.6C. Oh well, I’m sure this year’s heatwave was just a one-off, and not part of some apocalyptic global trend. Maybe we were too harsh on distance learning – schools in the Philippines have already adopted it as a way to combat the intense heat the country is experiencing.

But it isn’t enough to just cook our kids alive – we’re apparently trying to tenderise them first. Last year the Conservative government was struck by the Raac concrete scandal, when it was revealed that schools all around the country had been built using unsafe, crumbling materials, and schools all around the country were forced to evacuate.

But surely we offered students affected by the scandal extra help in their exams? Of course not – what is this, the Soviet Union? No, unfortunately those who were forced conjugate verbs in buildings that were literally collapsing around their ears will not have their circumstances taken into consideration when receiving their final grades. Hopefully the experience will have helped build enough character in our young people to offset any potential drop in marks.

It isn’t all bad news, though. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has pledged to reverse “baked-in” inequalities in our education system, in order to undo some of the lasting damage of 14 years of Tory misrule. What exactly that entails is a bit up in the air, but it’s certainly better than nothing, especially when today’s results show that the inequality in grades between independent schools and comprehensives in England has grown even wider.

No matter what the future holds for subsequent cohorts of students, this year’s graduates should be commended for somehow managing to claw their way through the muck and emerge on the other side, results in hand. They’re made of sterner stuff than most of us, that’s for sure. Whether they go on to university or head straight into the workplace, they’ve earned whatever success they manage to achieve going forward.

And besides, like I said, the hard part’s over – I’m sure it’ll all be smooth sailing from here.