Blood, toil, tears and sweat” is what Winston Churchill most famously offered the British people. Less famously, he also gave us A-levels.
If you ask any current school-leaver, that quote just about sums up the ordeal of public examinations. Quite literally, in fact; my friend Ellie distinctly remembers sweat dripping from her brow in the exam hall due to the lack of air-con during this year’s 30C heatwave, as she tackled a flurry of logarithmic equations.
But sweat isn’t all we’ve had to overcome. Today is results day – and my own results are imminent – it is about time we reflected on quite how hard the class of 2025 has had it, having started our GCSEs in the aftermath of the entire exam system being cancelled during the pandemic by former education secretary Gavin Williamson. Public exams were still undertaken throughout the Second World War.
It is my cohort that has never had it so tough – harder than those who only sat mock exams during Covid, their real exams having been cancelled in favour of teacher-assessed grading. And yet we embarked on our first year of GCSE learning amid the fallout from that Covid disruption, and have now been examined for A-levels by an education system keen to re-establish its rigour and fire-damaged reputation.
My sister, three years older, often wistfully contemplates what it would have been like to have sat her GCSEs. She didn’t realise then how good she had it. The system – which involved an algorithm determining final results, based on supplied estimated grades and a ranking against every other pupil at the school within that same estimated grade bracket – was imperfect, yes. But despite some grades being dependent on institutional reputation or unfairly weighted mock performances, the numbers speak for themselves.
Generation Covid enjoyed an unprecedented boost in results, with the GCSE pass rate jumping by almost 10 per cent from 2019 to its peak in 2021. The number of A-A* grades at A-level also increased by over 12 per cent.
In reality, it is my year that has borne the brunt of the pandemic’s academic fallout. By the time we took our GCSE exams, grade inflation had ended, with numbers returning to pre-virus years – ignoring the fact that our education had been fundamentally impacted by Covid as well.
Data suggests that more than half of us were being taught GCSE content in year 9, all while we endured lockdowns, but with no grade compensation in sight. Again, this year, we are still feeling the effects of the Covid mess: talk is rife of “grade deflation” to balance out the boom of previous years’ high grades. It hardly fills one with confidence.
The general stress of revision and the exam period has been clear for years. Every time exam season rolls around, calls to Childline spike, with students buckling under the mental toll.
Personally, I have noticed a biennial twitch under my left eye, coinciding with my GCSEs and A-level prep – hardly catastrophic, it remains a minuscule sign of the unparalleled strain exams put on us.
My friend and classmate Mads recognises the wider impacts on our specific cohort. “For our year group, the effects of Covid go beyond just missing in-person lessons. I genuinely don’t think that we had the same access to resources for mental and physical health, as well as resources for our learning. It feels disheartening to know that we have to compete at the same level as year groups that were uninhibited by the pandemic; we are being held to a standard that doesn’t take into consideration just how deeply Covid has affected us.”
This year, the unfairness and confusion of the process have been highlighted. The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) had initially suggested that up to a third of students received 25 per cent extra time, with the rate at independent schools reaching 40 per cent.
However, since then, Ofqual has retracted the figures, which it now deems inaccurate. It appears the genuine stats of those with special exam requirements are mired in confusion.
At school, rumours swirl of many who have coughed up over £700 for “private consultations”, which almost inevitably result in exam benefits, such as typing or extra time. The system isn’t working, and exam boards are only now taking notice.
Take psychology A-level – long notorious for its content and complexity. This year, the exam board AQA revealed that, at long last, it will be slashing next year’s content by around a fifth. My friend and psychology survivor remains unimpressed. “It was clear the course had way too much content, and that hindered the results,” he tells me. “It’s irresponsible that they are so late to change such a clear problem when we’ve been through it.”
Once again, my cohort is one year too late.
This results day, A-level grades alone won’t tell the story of a cohort that has endured once-in-a-generation disruption, having been judged by rules that were rewritten in real-time. I know that I’m certainly ready for this Churchillian task of stress, grit and endurance to finally reach its conclusion. Wish us luck…
