CONGRATULATIONS, KIDS!
Though NOT going to Uni must stop being the exception that proves the increasingly unfashionable rule...
Aug 13, 2026: Recent Leavers from my old (yes, girls’) school celebrate their results, via Instagram
A-Level Results Day and, according to The Times, ‘some 262,000 18-year-olds have been accepted [at university], up 3 per cent from last year’. Meanwhile ‘It used to be that if you were right for university, you’d be selected to go. All that has changed and universities are vying for your custom, selling courses to anyone who will buy them. A degree is now a commodity…’ Ben Wilkinson writes in the same paper ‘…None of this means that university isn’t worth it anymore, but we need to have an open and frank conversation about who is best served by the present regime. It has not been a great year for academia…’.
Understatement of the week!
Congratulations to the happy kids, of course. Yet, arguably, even bigger congrats should go to those bold enough to pivot away from a degree in Sociology in favour of doing a Masters in Baristology at the University of Costa—aka working.
It’s six years since my first A-Level Results Day (second if you include my own), during which my eldest son waited to find out if Gavin Williamson would allow him to get a place in Clearing. Having only joined UCAS during Lockdown, prior to Covid scuppering the best-laid plans of his 2020 A-Level cohort Jackson had planned to take a Gap Year and apply to Uni later—with his real results. He’d coasted Mocks in Maths, Physics and Economics, un-fussed by his average results: ‘No worries, Marge’ he assured me with typical confidence, ‘I’ll deliver on the day!’
Except, of course, there was no day on which he could ‘deliver’.
Jackson’s original plan was Economics at Manchester Uni — Sold Out by the time Clearing arrived. He was, however, thrilled to discover that while Cardiff’s Economics degree was also Sold Out they could offer him Physics… if Gavin bumped his fake grades up a bit.
Happily, this came to pass — so, yes, I was very proud when my A-Level-free son eventually ‘graduated’ with his BSc Hons in 2023, even though his fake A-Levels were followed by a faux graduation ceremony with no scroll; lecturer’s strikes had ensured his papers were yet to be marked.
Cardiff, July 19, 2023: Jackson Peacock BSc wearing my late dad’s tie, covered in hearts. Doug would’ve literally exploded with pride, I think
Jackson died two months later — without knowing his results. And that terrible day fell within the first month of my younger son’s Year 13.
No less ‘smart’ than his brother, he is nonetheless very different. Dyslexia distracted him in primary school however his Secondary adventure kick-started when he won an ‘all-rounder’ scholarship to a small independent school nearby (Jackson, meanwhile, was at the country’s only co-ed boarding Grammar). Then Covid arrived in Year 9, and we discovered random lessons at home on Microsoft Teams were very much not for him.
Nonetheless, he did fine in his GCSE’s, moving on to A-Levels at sixth form college. That he successfully sat these just nine months after his brother’s death is entirely down to a combination of his smarts, his dogged determination and his resilience. I then funded him on a (very useful!) week-long WSET course after which he worked in a cocktail bar for a couple of months before heading to Australia for the Gap year his brother never managed to take — financed mostly by the sale of a Rolex my late father had left to Jackson.
When I next saw him, in Brisbane airport at Easter last year, he was notably different in all the right ways: no longer a lad but a Young Man. We went on to have an extraordinary week (which I wrote about in six columns, here) before he went to meet some of Jackson’s friends in Thailand — honouring his brother’s memory at the month-long Muay Thai martial arts bootcamp that Jackson (a karate 1st Dan black-belt) had so looked forward to attending. When he eventually returned — scraping six-foot, super-buff and inscribed by a former Buddhist monk with sacred Sak Yant tatts (providing ‘physical protection, good fortune and strength’) — he confessed that he itched to leave home.
My son ended his Gap Yah with the appropriate life skills, and branding: a Level 1 WSET Award in Spirits, ‘Sak Yant’ tatts and an Aussie ‘Masters’ in ‘Grill’
We’d redecorated his bedroom in his absence, so this Empty Nest moment — made all the more poignant for obvious reasons — had arrived quicker than anticipated; within weeks he was in London, juggling pizza-making shifts and a Saturday job. There were, he assured me, no University plans — however I was as confident this was the correct choice for him as going to Uni had been for his brother.
Jackson had had a student tuition loan while his father and I covered his rent, so his brother would be helped too; caveat: while he was at the Uni of Life, until he was 21. London rent is obviously bigger bucks than student shares in Cardiff but, imho, is money well-spent — and yes, I appreciate that while I am far from anything approaching wealthy, I am able to help him, just as I know that if his brother were still alive I may not be able to help as much as I do; in the parallel universe in which he is both alive and 24, even with that pukka degree Jackson could easily require occasional parental bungs…
Clearly I have no idea what Jackson may have achieved in life, however he was ambitious, wanted to work in A.I. and I suspect he would’ve found his way. Right up until the moment of his death he was by his own admission ‘a lucky bastard’.
What I do know, though, is that within six weeks of landing a Saturday job my younger son was offered a full-time role, which he started last November on a salary of 26K, aged 19. Several of Jackson’s graduate friends — four/five years older — are earning much the same so if you’re this year’s A level cohort hoping to graduate (in something other than, say, medicine/dentistry/veterinary/engineering/STEM) then what will that expensive First/2:1 buy you in 2029, apart from a raft of happy Insta Graduation snaps by your parents—and giant debt?
My son landed his job in comically retro fashion, too. Instead of a ChatGPT CV sent into a digital void to be ignored alongside everybody else’s, he literally asked a human being for an opportunity and swiftly started to prove he had both the nous and the diligence to do it full-time. And I make no apology for being precisely as proud of that as I am of his brother’s Russell Group smarty-pants BSc. I also appreciate that one does not get to talk one’s way into a City Bank/Leading Chambers/Top Architectural Practice without a relevant degree, however with a PhD from John Moores I guess there is always ‘Academia’ to fall back on, Jason Arday-style*
In truth, my magnificent 3D son learned infinitely more in two years of not going to Uni than he would have by going and is now at the start of what looks suspiciously like A Career. He also lives independently (with a couple of Jackson’s mates, sweetly), cooks, cleans, irons his own shirts and (mostly) pays for his own beers. In all of this, he really shouldn’t be the freaky ‘exception’ that proves the increasingly outmoded ‘rule’.
If, then, you’re a young person who is not especially academic but just bust a gut to secure A’s decent enough to get you into a coast-able degree at an OK Uni, I’m sure both of my sons — albeit from very different perspectives (and beyond the space-time-continuum, in Jackson’s case) — would suggest that, just maybe, you think again. Not only about who you really want to be as you navigate all that Adulting — but why? Because it’s not only a big exciting old world out there, but we’re all a long time dead.
Now thoroughly memory-holed, this kind of witty stuff was pinging around during 2020’s A-Level Results day. I’m so glad Jackson sent me a screenshot — Lest We Forget
[* This ‘stack was written the day before Jason Arday’s sadly premature death]
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