Today, hundreds of thousands of students received their GCSE results. Among them were almost 170,000 post-16 students receiving GCSE English grades and 180,000 students above the age of 16 anxiously waiting to find out their GCSE maths grades.

For students resitting GCSE maths or English, getting that grade 4 is absolutely essential: and, for some, it can take three, four or even nine attempts. GCSE results day is always a particularly anxious day for them – and this year, given the disruption and chaos around how grades were arrived at, it has been more stressful than ever.

Tes columnist Alfie Payne caught up with some GCSE resit students to see how they got on today, and what they made of the centre-assessed grading system. 

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George Brownsea, college student

College student George Brownsea picked up two GCSE results today: he achieved a grade 5 in English and a grade 3 in maths. 

Brownsea tells Payne that he feels like "Harry Potter when he first rode a broom". 

He says that he feels that he has been "cheated" by the exam boards in the past – missing out on a grade 4 by just one mark left him in tears for weeks, he says. 

"With this method, I know I wasn't cheated. I know I have some strengths and weaknesses and I have put in so much work. If I was in an exam, I know for certain I wouldn't have been able to show my strongest suits," Brownsea says. 

He says that centre-assessed grades "should be the way forward".

"We should be pushing this narrative of teachers and students bonding more, and hopefully this will pass on into the future and we might see a stronger workforce come out of it," he says. 

Emelia Heard and Tom Brownrigg, teaching apprentices 

Both Emelia Heard and Tom Brownrigg are teaching apprentices in a special school in Blackpool. Today, they both found out that they achieved that crucial grade 4 in GCSE maths.

Heard tells Payne that she feels the centre-assessed grades are more beneficial.

"No one knows you better than the teacher who is teaching you, I feel it was such a benefit for our colleagues to give us the C [grade 4] we deserve because they know the hard work we put into it," she says.

Brownrigg adds that they were both working full-time alongside trying to get that all-important grade 4, and that their school was really supportive. 

"There was a stage where I dreaded doing maths ever again, and it's rekindled a love for learning new things," he says. 

They both agreed that, moving forward, the centre-assessed grades are just as beneficial as physically sitting an exam. 

"We did lots of mock exam papers to see where we were up to. We were having weekly lessons, going home to do more work each night; we were still getting work set for us, so [the teacher] could see the progress we were making. We have been tested the exact same as we would have been if we had done the actual exams. We were still doing mocks until May or June when they had to send the grades off to the exam boards", says Brownrigg.