Thetford Academy Principal Michael Fordham discusses the importance of academic achievement ahead of the summer exam season.
Every summer we get GCSE and A Level results day, and every summer – without fail, there will be some famous commentator in the media show up to tell students that they failed all their exams and it did not stop them from being successful.
This is a wonderful example of what is called survivorship bias. This is what happens when someone is lucky, and assumes that their luck would be true of anyone who had their circumstances. Consider the person who, when asked why they lived to 100, says they smoked a packet of cigarettes a day “and it didn’t do me any harm”.
But to understand the risks of something, we need to look not only at the survivors, but also all those who were not so fortunate. For every smoker who lives to 100, there are many thousands more who suffered the health consequences of their choices.
And the same is true of doing well at school. Clearly, one does not need to do well at school to have a chance of being successful. There are many examples of people who have done exactly this. But, for the average young person, working hard and doing well at school opens a world of opportunities and possibilities.
This is why education matters. As in so many walks of life, hard work and perseverance in school do not guarantee success, but they probably do on average give people a better chance than they otherwise would have had. As we head towards the exam season in schools across the country, it can be tempting to give up when things get difficult. So if you know a teenager preparing for exams this summer, give them all the help and support you can, because it may just be the thing that helps them get to where they want to be.
