Katy Hamilton

Well, it’s happened again. Results Day. That terrifying Thursday morning when you must make the journey, or the phone call, or risk logging into your UCAS account, to find out How It Went. Were the last two years of your life well spent? Did you choose the right subjects? What are your parents going to say if actually you don’t get into your first choice after all… and what are they going to say if you do?

I am delighted to report that I don’t have to write the piece that I was expecting to, based on press coverage of A-level results in previous years. That post goes something like: for goodness’ sake, why do journalists insist on undermining the hard work of all those students who put in the time and got their grades by telling them that marking is slacker and exams are easier? How do you think it feels to make it to the end of your exams, to have sweated your way through countless lessons, revision sessions, nervous waiting in the corridor before you’re called in to take your seat and begin, if you are only allowed to bounce around in victory for half a day before the people in print gang up and tell you that you’re not as clever as all that because the assessments have been dumbed down?

So I don’t have to write about that, and this strikes me as a very good thing indeed, because it’s what I’ve felt has needed saying to every generation of school leavers for at least the last fifteen years. Thank goodness that fifteen years (which is, by the way, over seven times the number of years in which these folk have to do their A-levels) is apparently long enough for us all to have learned something.

Instead, as a record-breaking number of people are offered places, and the pass rate has fallen for the first time in over three decades, I find myself both cautiously optimistic and a little bit worried.

On the one hand, maths and the sciences have become more popular with students, women and men, and that suggests a rise in interest and ambition around technological study. On the other, last weekend I had a conversation with a freelance maths and chemistry tutor who helps 11 to 18-year-olds with their studies. Her eminently sensible and entirely sympathetic assessment of her students’ plight is that they don’t actually want flashy textbooks with dancing stickmen and projectile problems about Mr Applethwaite bowling cricket balls to his son – they want to know how to pass the exams. That’s what matters to them.

As I mentioned above, the number of students accepted for university places is higher than ever before; but reading through yesterday’s newspaper reports about results and university places, the number of times that phrases like ‘buyer’s market’ (for students) and ‘facilitating subjects’ (that’s maths and science – I had to look it up). And the shift in exam timings within the year which makes it much harder to take resits.

I’m not about to launch into a long rant about how utterly exam-saturated the British education system is, because we all know that. Nor am I going to suggest that would-be university students shouldn’t have some sense of their future beyond the degree, and that subject choices, affordability, the universities they choose, and so on, could effect that. But it worries me that we now appear to consider school to be the time when you shunt from one assessment to the next, and university as a career investment in a way that casts Oxford or Cambridge as a customer-centric business rather than a place of learning and exploration. Yes, sometimes you just have to knuckle down and take the test – particularly at GCSE when you are sitting a very broad range of subjects and it’s pretty much impossible that you’re going to love all of them equally. Yes, Mr Applethwaite and his wretched cricket ball gets extremely tedious after a while, and you wish they’d dispense with all the contextual claptrap and cut to the chase. And yes, a good degree will help your job prospects. But.

My own experiences, of course, colour my judgement. The 11+ was no problem; GCSEs were fine; A-levels passed relatively smoothly. But I wouldn’t have made it to my university of choice without the chance to resit Maths and Physics modules that I’d been struggling with. (The number of evenings I sat in my room, Mr Applethwaite and his bleedin’ cricket ball on one side of me and far too many crisps on the other tryIng to work my way through Mechanics homework just doesn’t bear thinking about.) I chose my universities list based, in the first instance, on league tables without any real sense of what those tables meant – when I actually went to visit them, and met the staff and students, the choice was absolutely crystal clear to me and had nothing to do with the university profile and everything to do with the exciting, friendly atmosphere I encountered there. Of course, you might well argue that it was the excellence of the department that contributed to this atmosphere. But later in my academic career, I turned down a place at an extremely distinguished and high-ranking institution because it didn’t feel right, and I have never regretted that decision.

I suppose my point is this. There is great benefit in being wise to the nature of your studies – the centrality of exams, the profile of your school and university – and it can stand you in good stead for many years to come. There are many excellent jobs to be had connected with STEM subjects, and I have tremendous respect for those who apply themselves to these tough and fascinating courses. (And as a wise friend of mine pointed out to me a few days ago, not only should we currently be celebrating the first ever woman to win the prestigious Fields Medal for mathematics, but also the men who elected her to the award.)

But higher education has got to be about more than good grades and enriching areas of the national workforce. It’s also supposed to be about intellectual choice, the opportunity to be inspired, and learning how to think when all you’ve previously learned is how to retain the information you need to past the next exam. Regardless of subject, it’s about creativity and inventiveness, individuality and independence. And that’s before we even get near the extraordinary and vast array of clubs, societies, organisations and councils that you could join whilst you’re there, all the non-degree activites that will enrich your experience – and your CV.

So to those who have their results, and are going to be heading off to a new institution in the next couple of months: well done, and good luck. And remember. This is not only going to be an adventure in your chosen subject. It’s also going to be your chance to work within an organisation that allows you to try something new, outrageous, something you’d never get the opportunity to do in the ‘real world’ – playing a piano concerto, bungee jumping, model United Nations conferences, crazy late nights in the lab trying not to blow stuff up. Work hard. Keep an eye to the future. But above all, have fun. Cricket balls or no, that tends to be how we learn best.