Parents and celebrities like Jeremy Clarkson are wrong to talk down importance of exam results: Jayne Dowle

This year’s GCSE results show pretty much the same trajectory as 2024, when only 18.6 per cent of young people from this background achieved a ‘strong pass’ (Grade 5 or above) in maths and English. That’s less than a fifth. It’s a shocking statistic.

It should be a source of national shame, but for some adults flunking exams is almost a badge of pride.

Last week, when thousands of teenagers in our town received their GCSE results, I was appalled to stumble across a self-congratulatory post on Facebook from an acquaintance, a local businessman in his fifties, with children of his own, who bragged that he had never passed an exam in his life and it hadn’t never done him any harm, or stopped him from getting on.

Is it any wonder that white working class young people’s aspirations are so low when this is the prevailing culture?

Such comments are probably meant to be comforting, and not taken too seriously. They usually come from individuals who possess the drive to succeed with or without exam certificates.

Indeed, Doncaster-born TV presenter turned successful farmer Jeremy Clarkson is known for his annual anti-exams social media posts, this year sharing the following with his followers – “If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing landing lights for a helicopter pad in my garden.”

We never seem to hear from those still kicking themselves for not listening to their teachers and taking exams seriously, presuming they could drift through life quite successfully without.

Speaking as a white working-class child who failed maths – it was O Levels back then – twice and was sick with anxiety at the prospect of my lack of numerical prowess scuppering my chance of escaping to university, I know at first hand how important this first set of examinations can be.

I’d grown up with the idea, planted in my head by my mother, that girls didn’t need maths, except for mental arithmetic, and it was perfectly OK to be as rubbish at algebra as she had been. I scraped a C in the end.

My own son struggled academically. Whilst he achieved other GCSEs, he couldn’t get his head around English language or maths. No matter how hard he tried, with help from school and at home, the close attention to the text required in the former and ‘brain fog’ with the latter kept scuppering his attempts.

However, after leaving school to study for a Level 3 qualification at college, he was obliged to keep re-taking these GCSEs alongside until he passed.

I found nothing as depressing in my son’s entire educational life as dropping him at that resit examination hall – in the local leisure centre, the only place in town large enough to accommodate the sheer number of resit candidates – over and over, until Covid intervened. He ended up doing the next re-takes online during lockdown, and finally got a Grade 4 pass in English and a Functional Skills qualification in maths.

Without these, frankly, he wouldn’t have a job. He works in the voluntary sector now and passes in these vital subjects were a pre-requisite.

So these days, the fallacy promoted by my friend on Facebook is damaging the life chances of our kids. Only the fortunate few, blessed with an entrepreneurial brain perhaps, or amazing musical or sporting talent or stunning supermodel looks, can do without exam passes.

Phillipson needs to accept some harsh home truths, and sadly, the problem all too often does start at home. She must take action quickly, because the situation is getting worse.

This year, the overall English language pass rate has fallen from 61.6 per cent to 59.7 per cent. In maths, it fell to 58.2 per cent from 59.6 per cent in 2024.

Analysis suggests the fall is mostly driven by more students resitting, rather than any particular drops in performance from specific age groups.

Exam board OCR reports that the proportion of English and maths resit entries is at an “all-time high”, which means even more youngsters queuing outside that makeshift examination hall come November.

Without parents setting their sights for their children higher, anything schools can do will be to no avail.

Quite how Phillipson can inculcate such raised aspirations I’m not sure. A parent who doesn’t believe in passing exams will hardly listen to a politician trying to talk them round. But if parents truly love their children, they need to wake up to the fact that exam passes matter more than ever.