Go with your children to collect their exam results, parents advised

PARENTS should accompany children to collect their exam results, a Good Schools Guide director has said, following reforms that have led to the toughest tests in a generation.

Even if teenagers want to pick up their results alone, parents must insist on going in case anything has gone wrong, Bernadette John says.

“Quite often children might want to go on their own or with friends. But I would say ‘go with them’, if anything has gone awry, get in and sort it out straight away,” she said.

She advised parents to accompany children to school, then “skulk around the corner” while they go in to pick up their results.

Students will receive their GCSE and A-level results this month, following the biggest exam shake-up in decades.

Courses have been redesigned, with course work and modules axed in many subjects in a bid to toughen up syllabuses and inject rigour. The reforms, instigated by Michael Gove, the former education secretary, were aimed at driving up standards and bringing England into line with top-performing systems in the Far East.

Changes were also made to A-levels in response to criticism from universities that students were arriving insufficiently prepared for higher education.

Ms John, who heads up the Good Schools Guide’s educational consultancy, said that if a student receives a “rogue” result for a GCSE subject, a teacher “may well give a bit more leeway” if parents “speak to the teachers there and then”, she said.

For A-level results, students may need to act quickly if they missed their grades and need to secure a place via clearing.

Ms John said that while parents should go with their child, they must under no circumstances start ringing universities on their child’s behalf.

“It would be very poorly looked on for a parent to start phoning around universities,” she said.