I think it's cruel

Thank you Lillie - that sounds feasible. Her brother got one GCSE pass and sits the remainder next year. Scottish exams have changed too and I don't really understand them either. DH was a teacher before he retired and used to explain them all to me!

I don't understand why the media think it is necessary to broadcast so-called news about young people receiving their exam results. I have no interest in them individually unless they are people I know, in which case they will tell me themselves.

It's just the "song-and-dancism" of modern life. Maximum fuss all the time. Celebrate. Agonise. Partify.

Anything except just calmly get on with life without excess, the just take stuff in your stride approach.

Sigh.

I think it's horrible too - and emphasizes that education these days is just a big one-upmanship festival, where the competitive element has overshadowed what education is supposed to be about. So unoriginal too - the same scenario every year.

When I was at school my exam results came through the post. That made it a private matter and was slightly less stressful than having to go to the school. Do they have to go to the school???

You can have the results posted to you Falconbird but that means waiting a bit longer for them to arrive. Some examination boards, but not AQA or OCR, display them on line but the school needs to be signed up to this. It's just easier and quicker to turn up at school, and moreover the pupils can get on the spot advice from the teaching staff there regarding their future options.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL EXAM SITTERS.
I listened to Any Answers on radio 4 this afternoon and was horrified to hear that one child had failed an exam by just 2 marks and another had sat the same subject 7 times.
MY MESSAGE IS PLEASE, PLEASE REQUEST/DEMAND A RE-MARK WITH THE EXAM BOARD IF A CHILD FAILS AN EXAM.
I used to work as a temp at a well known exam board who took on thousands of uni students to check the marks of millions of exam papers and many corrections were made and re-logged on the system. There were also employees who didn't do the job and drew a salary for doing nothing (I reported 2 myself).
So you've got the examiners who mark the papers getting it wrong and papers not being re-checked.
PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO IS INVOLVED WITH STUDENTS TAKING EXAMS AT ANY STAGE.

In my day our results were posted to us. It gave one plenty of time to get a story worked out to explain why some of them were so bad