Results Day

All of the newspapers show the ecstatic students, leaping into the air with a piece of paper in their hands. But no one really knows what goes on behind the scenes. The truth is, results day is one of the most awful days of the year, nearly as bad as taking the exams themselves. You have to queue up and when you get to the front of the queue you have to open the letter in front of the teacher who gives it to you. This is alright if you think that you have done well, but if you have no idea what letter is going to be on the page in front of you, there is nothing worse than that moment.

I’ve just finished year 12, so I received my results for the first year of my A-Levels. My school is – let’s call it “selective” – which means we need to get a certain number of grade A-C’s to actually continue our education there. As soon as we were given our envelopes, we were told whether we were on a list to see one of the teachers, presumably because we hadn’t met the required grades.

The queues to see these teachers were huge, and there were a lot of people who came out crying. People who knew from a young age that they wanted to be an engineer, for example, were told to drop Physics because they got a D in it, and take a subject such as Classical Civilisation. If they didn’t do this, they couldn’t stay at the school.

I understand that schools don’t want pupils who don’t try, but I know people who revised so much and still didn’t get the grades, so they have to leave. Surely the school should be supporting them, rather than telling them to find somewhere else. At the end of the day, it all comes down to statistics. When we leave the school, they want to be able to say that 100% of students got 5 A*-C’s, making them the top performers in Maidstone, or Kent. If the students who got an A, B and 2 Ds,for example in AS were allowed to stay in the school, they may not achieve that target.

Therefore, rather than results day being exciting, it is awful. Even if you did well yourself, you still aren’t happy because so many others didn’t, and being proud of yourself is seen as gloating. In addition to this, the fact that some of your friends may be leaving the school makes you dread the thought of next year because you have been close and supported each other since year seven.