Results day is always a stressful time for students and parents. Never more so than when learning has been disrupted and the assessment process has changed so much. The chaos of last year’s algorithm being hastily ditched hardly increased the confidence of this year’s A level students as they collected results remotely or in school.
Staying connected to our students during lockdown
I was supporting our students in St Thomas More School in North London. After a year in which all The Access Project tutorials were conducted online, today was the first time I actually managed to meet my tutee in person.
It was great to meet Bartek face-to-face and having tutored him in History I was delighted to see that he got a B which he thoroughly deserved. This helped him meet his first choice offer to study History at Queen Mary University of London (following in the footsteps of my very first tutee!)
In a role which can feel remote from the frontline (especially when school visits have been impossible) it was great to feel I’d made a tangible difference for one of our students and helped him unlock his potential.
Providing support to those who didn’t make the grades
Of course, there are also disappointments on results day if students don’t get the grades they hoped for. This is where The Access Project support really comes into its own. Aisha narrowly missed her offers, but with strong grades of BBC was able to study for the course of her choice at another university. She very generously thanked me for my help, but really it was all down to her mentor who’d come up with a plan B in case things didn’t go as expected.
A big thank you
So a huge congratulations to all our students, and Year 13s up and down the country, after what has been an incredibly difficult year for them. It’s also a huge credit to our tutors who worked tirelessly through the year. So many of the students I spoke to said they couldn’t have achieved the grades they did without their tutors’ support. So today is an enormous achievement for tutors, just as much as it is for our students.
And finally a big thank you to all our staff, whether supporting students in-school or staffing online research hubs to provide up to the minute information on course options. This is a culmination of a year’s effort and a moment to take real pride in what our young people have achieved.