If ever there was a cohort of school leavers who deserved congratulations on their A-level results, it is surely the class of 2022, who received their grades on Thursday. No group of sixth formers in postwar Britain has suffered a more disrupted education than they have. The Covid pandemic left prolonged and ineradicable marks on their schooling. It ruptured their teaching and disturbed their study, their exams and their university applications. It also had an often traumatic impact on their home lives, those of their families and friends, and their own development into young adults. There were also very many direct sufferers from the virus itself, although relatively fewer serious cases.
In spite of all this, the 2022 A-level class have made the grade. They should wear their achievement as a generational badge of honour. This is also the conclusion to be drawn from the results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as a whole. Nearly 426,000 students had their university places confirmed on Thursday. This is a slight fall from last year, but it is also overwhelming evidence that there remains huge public demand for higher education in modern Britain, which the pandemic and its associated disruptions has done little to deflect. Significantly, demand is higher than ever among the most socially disadvantaged students too, whose acceptance numbers went up, not down. In the 2020s, education remains the springboard to social mobility.
