Why the Class of 2020 must not become a 'lost generation' - Laura Collins, YEP Editor

Results day is a right of passage for any student.

It is the crescendo to years of hard work and signals the start of the path into adulthood wherever that looks set to take you.

The day is also a ritual for students to gather with their friends as they collect the dreaded brown envelope that determines their future pathway.

I can still remember the sleepless night before collecting my own A-level results, which feels like a lifetime ago, wondering if I had made the grade to allow me to move to Leeds to start university. The rest is history.

Over the years the results may have migrated online but this year will be a very different experience.

On Thursday hundreds of thousands for students are set to get their long anticipated results but the Class of 2020 has been robbed of their traditional student experience.

Certain milestones have been taken out of their hands due to the impact of the virus.

Exams have been cancelled, there was no traditional last day of school, the prom never happened and neither did a “normal” summer holiday.

Many schools are trying to ensure they can have one last rite of passage – a socially-distanced results day.

Schools are working to ensure they are Covid-secure and have also warned their students about gathering in groups to celebrate their results.

But here’s the salt in the wound for many students who have worked so incredibly hard – they will be awarded qualifications without even sitting any exams.

Instead Thursday’s results day will focus on forecasted grades which further adds to their anxiety during what has been a challenging period after the country went into lockdown.

Universities face their “busiest” ever period of clearing as a record number of students are due to take up degree places this year through the system, the head of the admissions service has predicted.

School leavers who have had their gap year plans disrupted by Covid-19 will be among those who choose to bypass the main application scheme in favour of searching for a course through clearing, Ucas said.

Clare Marchant, Ucas’s chief executive, said it was a “good year” for prospective students in Britain who wanted to attend university in the autumn as institutions will be competing to fill their courses at a time of uncertainty.

The “fragile” situation, where the number of overseas students could fall amid Covid-19, alongside the fact there are fewer 18-year-olds in the population, plays to UK “students’ strengths”, she said.

But Ms Marchant admitted that more local lockdowns in the weeks to come could “influence student choice” ahead of enrolment in the autumn, as she added the situation was “exceptionally fragile”.

Last week the Yorkshire Evening Post reported on the economic impact our city’s universities have on Leeds– we also looked at the calls to ensure the Government protects them from the current health crisis.

We can’t afford for a lost generation on the back of the trials and tribulations on the Class of 2020.

They have been robbed of so much that we have a duty to help them make the grade.

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