Take it from somebody who took them recently (and did well) – your GCSE results mean basically nothing

Last week, A-level results day saw a backlash against the idea that “exams don’t define you”, with teachers and Twitter warriors alike coming out to say that exams are more important than the “snowflake generation” might have you think. If a student puts in enough effort in the classroom, these people said, then they should be able to attain highly in the exam hall: it’s as simple as that. And we’re now seeing a similar narrative around GCSEs.

This time last year, I was still celebrating my own A-level results (A*A*A, plus A*s in General Studies and the Extended Project). It would therefore be convenient for me to support the view that hard work yields good results and if you don’t get the grades you want, you probably don’t care about education as much as your high-achieving counterparts.

But that just isn’t the case.

The fact is that academic achievement is not, and has never been, an entirely meritocratic system. I’m completely aware of the fact that I’m very lucky that I was able to achieve well, through a combination of good teaching, a bit of help from friends and parents, and natural aptitude for information retention.

But I know people who, in the two years of sixth form and throughout years 10 and 11, worked far harder, and for far longer, than me – yet didn’t achieve anywhere near the results that I did.

Of course, there are some success stories where students have grittily toiled against all the odds and achieved outstanding results despite various disadvantages – and hats off to them. But for many, working hard is just not enough.

To suggest that exam results are purely down to the tenacity of the individual, and that anyone can achieve great results if they want them, is overly simplistic and unfair on young people who try their very best but fall at the last hurdle. After all, why do we measure “value added” grades in school league tables if the only dependable way of finding out about a school’s educational quality is by counting up the numbers of As and A*s – or, in the case of some GCSEs now, eights and nines?

Let’s not forget that mental health problems in young people are becoming more common as the pressure is piled on for them to jump through more and more hoops, often which change at the last minute as we have seen with the GCSE grading system.

I now attend the University of East Anglia where I live and work alongside students who achieved a range of BTEC and A-level results, plus international equivalents, and some mature students who have only O-levels and life experience. It’s a diversity which I appreciate and which enriches my learning experience.

We’ve heard quite a few times that Jeremy Clarkson (yawn) and other various entertainers have turned school failure into successful careers – but it’s not just them. Entrepreneur Lord Sugar famously has a lack of formal qualifications, proving that experience is by far the best educator in a number of lucrative and interesting industries.

There’s little accounting for creativity or intuitive problem-solving in most GCSE and A-level courses, especially with the vast recent reduction in coursework. Resilience under pressure and working effectively in a team are other attributes which simply cannot be judged in a two-hour exam script but are vital in most workplaces.

Today and tomorrow, many well-meaning family and friends will be reminding (some clinically) anxious 15 and 16-year-olds that lower-than-average GCSE results are not the end of the world. The unpredictability of results under the new systems of examination and grading, especially, will be rightly held up as a reason to forgive those who missed the boundaries they wanted to leap over.

In a lot of cases, weak results do not mean a lack of effort, and to suggest that “you only have yourself to blame” for failing is as demeaning to those students who lack access to extra lessons and coaching as it is to the back-breaking professions they will go into.

No school qualifications are needed to get into many of the most respected and competitive careers around: business managers, prison officers, chefs, firefighters, salespeople. Even in highly demanding jobs like air traffic control, which require intellectual rigour, just five good passes at GCSE are needed – the rest depends on how you prove that you’re right for the job in other ways.

Many young people decide that they’re better suited to something other than formal classroom education. A lot of them succeed in the non-academic route they pursue, through old-fashioned hard work and tenacity, which should be just as respected as the person whose hard work and tenacity gains them a slew of top-level results in their GCSEs this week. It’s about time we recognised that academic qualifications have their limits.