Hard-working talented A-level students absolutely deserve the benefit of their rightly deserved grades.
There's another group who don't seem to be getting much attention and if I was taking exams this year I would have been one of them. A longish thread. 1/x

Studying for my A-levels back in the mid 1970s I was not a high-performing school student. I worked hard and did well in the subject that most interested me (Biology), but I didn't get on well with Chemistry, and some of the mathematics in Physics was beyond me. 2/x

My Biology teacher, Dick Parfitt, was ‘that teacher’, the one who inspired me, who taught me things outside of the curriculum about life and attitude, and talked to me like I was a person. 3/x

I loved biology, and in particular, I loved plants. I hadn’t any plan for a career, but what I wanted was to go to university, study plant biology, and learn as much about plants as I could. 4/x

There’s a lot I could say about my attitude. In the context of study, the opportunities were there and I didn’t take them. In a school report one Chemistry teacher, said something along the lines of ‘his result reflect his attitude to life’. 5/x

This man wasn’t a great teacher, neither was he a bad one, some friends got on well with him. I don’t think he loved his subject like my Biology teacher. Had he given up on me, or made a last desperate attempt to goad me? It certainly pissed me off. It was fair comment. 6/x

We did our mocks and they were a disaster. I needed two good results and I had one. Physics was a write-off, my only chance was Chemistry. 7/x

In that last term before exams I bought books, I read, and I studied like I had never done before. Fear drove me, fear that I’d fail, fear that the Chemistry teacher had been right. I worked harder than I had ever done, like I should always have done. 8/x

I passed Chemistry A-level with a decent grade. Not brilliant, but good enough for my Uni offer. I did as well as smarter friends, I stunned that Chemistry teacher, he didn’t know what to say. It’s been decades but I think he actually said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ 9/x

I went to Uni of Hull, studied Plant Biology, graduating with a 2:1 and the best marks of the year. 100% for some papers. Uni suited me, the attitude towards learning was totally different and it grabbed me. That’s not my point. 10/x

My point is, I was a child who, up until those A-level exams had not lived up to their full potential through nobody’s fault except their own. In those last few weeks I managed to turn myself around. 11/x

There must be many students this year who, like me, pulled out the stops and turned their academic performance around. My heart aches for them. I can only hope they too get the fair treatment the deserve, & full credit for that final effort. I don't know if this is possible. 12/x

If that doesn't happen, please don't give up, don't fall into despair. Life is not over. You have it in you. 13/x

If my A-level results were based on expectations, if they had been run through some biased and hostile government algorithm I can take a good guess at the results. I don't know what I would have done. 14/x

What I do know is that apart from teaching Biology, Mr Parfitt also taught me how to study, how to learn, and how to teach myself. In this context I owe him everything. Teachers have been betrayed by this results disaster too. 15/Ends