School results day has become one of those annual media rituals that now arrives with all the subtlety of a royal wedding.
Television crews descend on schools. Reporters wait outside the gates. Teenagers are encouraged to wave bits of paper in the air while photographers search for the perfect shot.
And I find myself wondering when this became normal.
When I sat my exams, you didn't even go to school to collect your results. You got an envelope through the post. You opened it at home. You told your parents. End of. The world carried on turning.
Of course, some people were thrilled and others disappointed. Exam results mattered then, just as they do now. What didn't exist was the assumption that every personal milestone had to be converted into a public spectacle.
Every year we see exactly the same photographs. Smiling pupils leaping into the air. Groups hugging each other. Proud teachers standing in the background.
What we don't see are the pupils whose results didn't go according to plan.
We are constantly told that young people are under unprecedented pressure, suffering unprecedented anxiety and struggling with unrealistic expectations. Yet we seem perfectly happy to transform one of the most stressful days of their lives into a media circus.
Not everything needs a camera crew. Not every success requires a photograph. Not every disappointment needs an audience. An examination result is a piece of information, not an entertainment format.
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think an envelope through the letterbox had much to recommend it.
You opened it.
You dealt with it.
And then you got on with your life.
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