Of course exam results matter – but let’s redefine what ‘success’ actually means

If you can face disappointment of the deepest kind and then come back with a new plan you will be just fine, writes Katy Brand

Students across the country received their A-level and GCSE results this week (EPA)

It has become a national event, something we can set our watches by, something perhaps we have even come to rely on. And this year we were not let down, for as students around the country opened their exam results with shaking hands, so Jeremy Clarkson released his much-anticipated annual tweet, telling us all that good results don’t matter as long as you grow up to be just like him. He got two Us at A-level and still managed the astonishing feat of becoming Jeremy Clarkson, and so therefore the whole damn system isn’t worth a single salty tear.

In fact, social media was ablaze with celebrities of various calibres telling young people who are not on Twitter and wouldn’t follow them even if they were, not to worry because even if you failed everything and didn’t go to university, you too could, by a series of extraordinary coincidences, a dollop of good luck, or the abuse of existing family connections, achieve the same level of career success they had. I include myself in this bracket. Offering unsolicited advice to imaginary teenagers is a temptation I have fallen victim to. It’s certainly a lot easier than offering unsolicited advice to real teenagers – I know, because I’ve tried.

And yet, though some of this tweet activity is obnoxious, and much of it is redundant (why would they listen to a parent solemnly reading out an advisory tweet from some woman they’ve never heard of, AKA me, when they don’t even listen to the parent in front of them?), I still think there is some value in the elders of the tribe weighing in to say that there is more to life than exam results, on or off the socials.