Do you remember where you were when you received your A-level results?

The excitement of rocking up at school to collect the envelope has now been diluted by the electronic transmission of results, or by logging on to Ucas to find out if your conditional offer has been met (a spoiler if ever there was one) - trepidation tied to the fact that university offers are made months earlier. The results themselves are immediately consequential.

So the day does not lack drama. In fact, if anything, the immediacy of information adds to the pressure on that fateful morn, particularly if the results aren’t what you expected.

In the late 1970s, the pace was rather more leisurely. I remember camping with school-friends in deepest Cornwall in the summer after A levels. To get my results I took my turn in a queue for the village telephone box. With a pocketful of coins, I phoned home.

The line was poor and the outcome inconclusive, partly because of my dad’s insistence on responding to my muffled entreaties with “Eh?” Was that a grade or an interjection? Added to which, down a crackly trunk line, a B sounded very much like a D. As a teenager, I didn’t blame the technology, I blamed my parent’s appalling failure to enunciate.

If results day brings anxiety to students, spare a thought for those who teach. August always brings back feelings of optimism tempered by anxiety.

Results-day rituals

On the day before results I’d head back to school to pick up the print-out. I’d retreat to somewhere guaranteeing solitude (not infrequently a toilet), sit down, take a deep breath, and read the list, scanning the grades to get a sense of the overall distribution. Then I’d look at each name, checking the grade against what I knew each pupil hoped for or, more importantly, needed.

Those feelings, of course, started on the day of the exams themselves. My ritual was to wait for about half an hour, and then make my way to the exam room, saunter down the aisle with all the insouciance I could muster (making sure not to kick the poorly-located waste bins), and scan the exam paper.

I did this with my back to the candidates, because I knew that whatever I thought of the questions, the important thing was to walk back down the aisle with the look of someone who had total confidence in the outcome. All the while, I’d be looking for signs of how my charges were doing.

If I could, I’d wait around outside after the exam, to catch the first response (always wary of those who came out saying, “well that was easy”), but on the look-out for any who needed the reassurance of a debrief.

Fast forward to results day. Swift action to assist those cast into clearing, or to advise those with second thoughts, becomes imperative. The post-mortem on the aggregate results comes later.

For now, it’s all about individuals. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Dr Kevin Stannard is the director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets as @KevinStannard1

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