The inevitable has happened. Exam results for this year’s cohort have been slammed as being inflated after another 12 months of disruption to education and to young people’s learning.

Relying on teacher assessment for the grading of students’ work was always going to have its critics; there is surely no other profession in the world so frequently criticised by so many people. It would appear that everyone is an expert when it comes to teaching; everyone apart from those working long hours to train, qualify and then teach our young people.

I qualified as a teacher just before the Millennium, graduating my PGCE course full of ideas and with an arsenal of techniques set to be able to reach the most challenging students. 20 years ago, the system still allowed enough wriggle room in the curriculum for a teacher to make choices about how best to approach the teaching and learning that happened in the classroom. Perhaps the most dispiriting thing about how education has evolved since then is the erosion of the teacher’s professional standing in making those decisions.

All teachers will tell you that every single child learns differently. The best teaching, and therefore the most learning, happens when a teacher is able to use a range of techniques and strategies to reach as many students as possible. Which brings me to the issue of the exam results just released. Some students thrive in exam conditions such as, those who have a good memory for example and are confident, those who have been able to revise and those untroubled by anxiety. Many, many students don’t thrive in exam conditions. What about the student who has dyslexia, an often overlooked symptom of which is poor recall? What about the student living in insecure housing or that hasn’t eaten since yesterday because money’s tight at home? Are they going to give the best account of themselves in an exam situation? Or the student that was bereaved a few weeks ago, that perhaps lost a parent, a sibling, or a friend. Are they being given an opportunity to demonstrate that the two years they spent working hard was worth it? Teacher assessment has allowed for a wider evidence base to be considered, a base that takes in the whole of a student’s progress over many days and months and which in doing so can ameliorate those other circumstances, unlike the single snapshot of one exam on one day. So I say, instead of looking at this year’s results as a leap too far, we should be looking at how to make the assessment of knowledge fairer across the board. Give teachers the respect they deserve and appreciate the years of experience coming together to give young people a grade that reflects their knowledge, not just their ability to pass a test.

There’s one final point I’d like to make. There will be many young people that despite what the data trends are telling us, didn’t get the grades they need or are disappointed with their results. If this applies to you, just remember you are the same fabulous person you were before you opened that envelope and you have the potential to do great things regardless of what a piece of paper says.