‘I didn’t sleep last night’: Leeds A-level students celebrate after stressful wait for results

Reading headlines of the biggest fall in A-level grades on record and how this year’s results were “never going to be pain-free”, 18-year-old Luke Savage had an anxious lead-up to picking up his grades on Thursday morning.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, after opening his results at Temple Moor high school in Leeds. “I think last time I checked my phone it was four in the morning. I felt sick last night just thinking about all the mistakes I did in the exams.”

But he need not have worried. He managed a B and three Cs, allowing him to study law and politics at the University of Law in Leeds. Though Savage was one of the third of students who missed out on their top choice of course, having hoped to do a masters integrated degree, he was pleased nonetheless.

He said: “My mocks were a bit higher and it’s infuriating that in some subjects I was a couple of marks away from the grade boundary. Law was a bit lower than I thought but it’s fine, I’m not complaining.”

This year the north-south divide in attainment has worsened and Yorkshire was one of the lower-performing regions. This disparity has been put down to the impact of Covid, as some places, particularly poorer areas, were harder hit.

While education at all levels suffered, this cohort of A-level students had the additional challenge of having not done exams since their year 6 SATs and having missed their GCSEs, which were assessed by teachers based on their school work and mock grades.

For Jess Peers, who earned a place studying environmental management at Manchester University, and Jake Sterling, who is going on to do a degree apprenticeship in quantity surveying at Leeds Beckett University, the stress of future-altering exams was huge.

“But it was worth it,” 18-year-old Peers said, collecting her As and Bs.

Sterling agreed, adding: “My grades are higher than I was expecting and higher than I got in my GCSEs.”

Matthew West, the school principal, said the pandemic had been tough for school, having to adapt to decisions made at a national level.

“There were numerous stories around policies or instructions or decisions being made the day before they had to be enacted, stuff coming through at midnight, for example, and I think the fallout from that is that it has bred a divide between school leaders and the policymakers, which needs to come together for the sake of young people,” he said.

“And now there is the added issue of funding. I’m going to go into this next year with not enough money and that’s before we consider fuel and energy price rises.”

He warned that he would have to look at the affordability of school trips and whether less-popular subjects would need to be cut.

“We’ve got over Covid but we’ve come back into a completely different climate. The government is saying we can have a world class education system and we can do it on the cheap. But you can’t. There’s not an economy in the world that’s done it on the cheap.”

Nevertheless, he was “fiercely proud” of this cohort of students for balancing part-time jobs, sports and other extracurricular activities with their studies.

He said: “I think they’re amazing with what they’ve done. They didn’t use Covid as an excuse to give up and not try, they’ve really got stuck into it and they’ve got their rewards today.”

Savage said he would be celebrating with a Nando’s later, while Peers was planning to go out with friends.

Sterling added: “If I say what I’m doing tonight I’ll be in trouble because I’m not 18 yet, so I’ll keep my mouth shut!”