"Don't panic" - Advice from York St John Uni for A Level students

The proportion of top marks handed to A-level students across Britain is down on last year, but still above levels before the pandemic.

More than a quarter of pupils have been given either an A or A-star - down by around 9 percent compared with 12-months ago.

That's still higher than in 2019 when over a third got full marks.

Matthew Taylor is in charge of clearing at York St John University: "Ofqual have been told by the Government that they need to bring grade boundaries back to 2019 levels and that has meant a lowering of grades across the board. The reason they have done that is to try and get the results back to 2019 levels so pre pandemic levels."

He has this advice for anyone who didn't get the results they wanted and are now going through the clearing process: "Find a quiet place, make sure you have certain information with you, so your UCAS ID, details of your results and importantly a viable email address and then start making calls to Universities."

"One of the most important things to say is that you should make the calls yourself because Universities won't deal with friends or relatives and another thing to bear in mind is that you can call as many Universities as you want. So if you want to rack up some choice that would be perfectly possible.

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