A-Level students Freddie and Rachel at Sheffield's Tapton School explain the struggle of studying through a pandemic
The students getting their A-Level Results today(August 15, 2024) were in Y9 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, making KS4 and KS5 a challenging time for them all. Here, two students from Tapton School - Freddie Howe and Rachel Hills, celebrate their results and talk about their school experience.
Transcript
00:00Hello, it's Alistair from the Sheffield staff. Thank you Freddie and thank you Rachel for speaking to us today.
00:04We're here at Tapton School. You guys have just had your A-Level results. How was it today?
00:09Pretty good, I'll be honest.
00:10A shock! A positive shock.
00:12A positive shock, alright. Is that better than we expected?
00:16A lot better than we expected.
00:18So much better.
00:20So much better, definitely so.
00:22Do you mind telling us what you got today?
00:23Yeah, I got A, B, C.
00:25A, B, C?
00:26I got A star, A, A.
00:27Smashing, alright. Do you know what you're going to do with that? Where are you going to go?
00:31Business Management, York University.
00:34And I'm doing History at Sheffield House.
00:36Staying here in Sheffield, smashing job, alright.
00:38I'm fleeing.
00:40You'll be back before too long, yeah, you'll see, that's alright.
00:43I think I've got a lot of sympathy for students your age.
00:46You've come through, I mean Year 9 was when you were in in 2019.
00:50Year 9, 2019 and then you had to go through a pretty disruptive couple of years I suppose.
00:56You guys have been real brave, I mean can you tell two people at home about what that was like to live through I suppose?
01:00I mean it was strange, it never felt real, I'll be honest.
01:05And then suddenly you're in Year 11 and you've pretty much missed half of Year 10 and half of Year 9.
01:11It's not so weird.
01:12Yeah, you could say that we're one of the years that maybe got off a bit better because we didn't have teacher assessed grades.
01:17However, we were one of the years that spent the most time at home, home learning.
01:22So although grade-wise students might still be better off and have enjoyed their A-Levels,
01:28there's a lot of times, especially when we were younger, we weren't socialising at school, we weren't in clubs and societies.
01:34And that social lack in those years prior might go on to disadvantage us in the future with confidence and applying for jobs and things like that.
01:45Those years were important.
01:46I can't imagine the way you all discuss it amongst yourselves I suppose.
01:50I guess it's like no one else could really understand it in some ways.