Disappointing results not the end

One range of emotions closely followed by another, different, range of emotions.

First thing yesterday morning, a train travelling the first range would have left a station called extreme nervousness, bordering on fear, travelling through the territories marked hope, to expectancy, and finishing up at a junction called supreme confidence, where only a few fortunate souls would have been found on the platform.

Within a few hours, the distribution of people along the length of the track would most likely have been fairly similar, though individuals may have moved stops, but the journey would have been one from despair, through indignance, ambivalence, satisfaction, and happiness, to unbridled elation.

Any time the massed ranks of a country’s scholars get their final results as high school students, it’s guaranteed the full gamut of possible emotions will be on display, because they’re big.

Yes, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) includes students at Levels 1 and 2 who will still have another year or two left at high school, but for those who finished Level 3 last November, the two-month wait after the end of their schooldays for the verdict yesterday, and their parents and caregivers, will have been particularly charged in the early days of 2018.

Now the verdicts are in and thousands of students are digesting what happened, and what it means for them from here. There will be some tears, some genuine fears, regrets at not having worked harder and some delight.

So, it’s appropriate to emphasise the message from the education sector, that NCEA results should not be a source of panic, for students or their families. It won’t mean much to those brought low by disappointment right now, but it’s true. The exams were not an end point, but a start, a portal into a future beyond secondary education, into adulthood.

For some, outstanding results will smooth the path, bringing guaranteed places in tertiary programmes of their choice, and likely financial support too, as a reward for excelling academically at school. But that’s only for a few, and even for them, there are no guarantees of future success. More hard work awaits.

What awaits is an opportunity, and with fee-free tertiary education back on the table, it’s an opportunity available to more school-leavers. Be disappointed, sure, and process that, but then look forward. As Secondary Principals Association president Michael Williams said this week, there is ‘‘always more than one way to achieve the outcome’’ they want for students who haven’t achieved the desired results.

This isn’t the end for anyone. It’s a new beginning for every student. How the future looks for each of them depends far less on what’s already been done than on what they do from here.