'God loves you — no piece of paper will change that' Exam results day tips

Picture: Andy Drozdziak

Young people awaiting A Level and GCSE exam results need to hear that results won't measure their worth, and that they will always be precious in God's sight, says youth minister Jack Regan

One of the many things I love about having faith in Jesus Christ is that he shows us who we really are. He gives us a beautiful (and true) vision of what it is to be people who are loved and who are made in the image of God.

As a youth minister, one of the great joys of my job is helping young people to see that vision. They live in a world that pushes at them a lot of different, competing visions of who they are. Some of them are good and true, but others can be harmful and divisive.

Every time a teenager scrolls through social media, they’re hit with the message that they’re not quite enough because they don’t look the right way, have the right clothes, go to the right events, support the right causes, or have the right products. The list goes on. If you’re young, a lot of people want a piece of you, and almost none of them are interested in the actual, real you.

Young people 'under immense pressure' to succeed in exams

One of the biggest ‘not enough’ dangers comes from the exam systems which most countries have in their schools. Young people, some of whom don’t have the first clue who they really are, find themselves under immense pressure to get their grades, and are implicitly told that their lives will be over if they fall short.

John Henry Newman, in his brilliant The Idea of a University, observed years ago that academic education had become far too tilted toward the exams. That device that was introduced later in the day as a simple quality assurance check became the be-all-and-end-all of education, and it created a tension and demand that an anxious system passed on to the young.

I’m not for a second saying that education is unimportant. I love both studying and teaching — and I’m switched-on enough to understand that there has to be some way to check that things have actually gone in. Exams do have their place. But that phrase ‘their place’ needs to do a lot of heavy lifting.

'God has a plan for your life which he will guard and protect'

A few days from now, thousands of eighteen-year-olds will open their A-Level results, and seven days later thousands more will get their GCSE grades. If you’re an adult in the life of one of those young people, you have some serious responsibilities. Celebrate if they’re happy, console them if they’re not and, by all means, discuss the road ahead.

There is a time and a place to talk about clearing, about resits and remarking and so on, but make sure – and I mean really make sure – that the important message that every baptised Christian should be transmitting to those around them doesn’t get lost in the fog:

There is a God who loves you and who made you in his image. He is walking by your side and he has a plan for your life which he will guard and protect, and no piece of paper will change that. Good results don’t mean that God loves you more and has a better plan for your life, and bad results don’t relegate you to a life any more mundane. The Kingdom of God has no slow lane, and definitely no sidelines.

But here’s the thing – we know all of that. Of course we do. None of us really think that exam results make the person, but the problem is that the teenager in your life who has just spent the last two years surrounded by stressed-out teachers, who themselves are under a deluge of pressure, possibly doesn’t know any of it.

As adults, we need to say it out loud — but we also need to say it with our actions, our tone, our inflections and all those other subtle things that spill out in difficult moments.

If the teenager in your life doesn’t get the results they want, don’t immediately start to talk about clearing or resits. Don’t let the first words out of your mouth validate their worst fears. Do the “you are already enough” thing first. Do it well. Then, when the dust settles, get a bit more practical.

• Jack Regan is Director of Youth Services in the Diocese of Lancaster