Once again it is ‘A’ Level results time, and very shortly GCSE results will follow, and with them the aspirations of many of our young people will be confirmed. Television channels and newspapers will doubtless show the euphoria of ‘A’ Level high achievers who will now go on to Universities across the land to begin the next phase of their careers. One must have a heart of stone not to feel some pride and pleasure upon see our finest youngsters doing well and rightly celebrating their success, likewise one feels deeply for the youngsters who did not do so well and are now working out what to do next.
Durham born student Matt Evens was featured this week on these pages having been there, got the t-shirt, and made good. One urges those students who have not achieved their hoped for first or second places not to give in, work with your advisers and talk to ‘UCAS clearing’ to find a new path to success, Northern Grit will always win out. In short, do not give in.
Similarly, our younger school pupils will receive their GCSE results in the next few days and their plans for ‘A’ Levels will be based on their success, best wishes from all of us.
The world of work will always favour the graduate with many going on to well paid careers and earning substantial incomes. Academia is a fine place for youngsters to be and well worth the costs incurred. Thankfully, the flawed and unworthy eleven plus days are well behind us, this was a time when children were separated out into streams of winners and losers at such a tender age. So many of those losers went on to achieve academic prowess proving that this disgraceful system was basically wrong. Many of our greatest men and women fell foul of the eleven plus system proving it to be a shameful miscarriage of justice and they went on to amazing success in life. In more recent times our educational establishment has improved to the extent that excellent results are achieved now thanks to gifted teaching and darned hard work by their pupils. True there is much still to be done, but looking at the ecstatic faces pictured on the local news our boys and girls are doing just great.
The re-introduction of apprenticeships, whilst not perfect, is a great boon and hopefully we may see the further development of ‘technical colleges’ allowing those youngsters who are better hands-on to have a professional career to their benefit, and to the benefit of the entire Country. As Great Britain re-enters World markets the opportunities for young graduate engineers, as well as those studying the humanities etc., must be increasing daily. Durham, County Durham and the rest of GB are famous for their prowess in making and building and creating on the World stage. Seeing the results coming out and the great achievements, combined with our fine heritage, one is very, very, impressed with the prospects for our youngsters. No doubt they will party for a day or three and rightly so, then it’s back to more hard work.
Bon voyage to them all on life’s journey.
