A Level students starting to arrive to collect their results

Anxiety and excitement levels are rising as A Level students are starting to arrive to collect their results today. It is thought that it will be the first year that grades will drop as marking goes back to normal since courses relied on predicted grading and inflated grades during Covid. 

However, despite having the odds stacked against them with covid disrupting their two years of A Level study and the pressure invoked by inflation which has put many schools in deficit, UCAS chief executive Clare Marchant has reported that the majority of students have gotten into their first choice institutions, 90% more than last year. That being said, Marchant made clear that it was “not easy” to return results to a pre-pandemic level, and that A Level results day today would not be “pain-free”. 

For the students who have missed out on their first choice, James Cleverly, the secretary of state for the education of the united kingdom, advises them to “hit the phones” and get in touch with the UCAS clearing office in order to see which university courses have spaces in an institution that would work for them as “clearing is a great matching service”. He recommends that they “talk to universities, talk to teachers” 

Along with the return to normal for standard exam marking this year, university admissions have also reintroduced a cap on the number of medical school places available in the UK, despite the medical school council’s recommendation that medicine places increase by at least 5,000, in order to combat the staff shortages contributing to the ongoing NHS crisis.

Cleverly has assured the BBC that the number of medicine places have increased this year, however the cap will remain in place, as creating more university places for potential doctors are expensive to fund and would mean imposing higher costs on the students themselves. 

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