THERE was a buzz of excitement and nerves this morning surrounding all the pupils who were opening their GCSE results for the first time.

Having taken my A-levels just last year and my first set of University exams this year, I could fully understand the emotional rollercoaster undertaken by each person opening their envelope.

There’s no question that it’s stressful to discover the outcome of your years of hard work with a few numbers on a page, with the pressure to achieve highly building year after year.

Celebrities such as Jeremy Clarkson have notoriously taken to twitter to make comments like "Don’t worry if your a-level grades aren’t any good. I got a C and 2 Us. And I’m sitting here deciding which of my Range Rovers to use today."

Whilst the intention behind these tweets may be to incite positivity and reassurance for those who don’t do as well as they had hoped to, I would say that this is in fact entirely counter-productive.

Realistically, exams are essential in enabling young people to get from where they are to where they want to go.

GCSEs get us into sixth form, A-levels get us into university, a degree gets us on the path to a career.

Yes, some people go on to be highly successful without incredible exam results, but it is worth noting that this is not the case for everyone, and is rather rare.

Equally, today’s exam system has changed massively since people such as Jeremy Clarkson took their exams – the two are hardly compatible.

By telling young people that their exams are useless, Clarkson is, perhaps unintentionally, advocating that the effort pupils put into their exams is a waste.

This attitude can also dishearten those who did work extremely hard to achieve excellent results when really, they should be overjoyed that their hard work paid off.

I would very much like to see Clarkson, along with other celebrities who publicly gloat of their successes after failing their exams, to comfort that sixteen-year-old crying because they missed their grades.

Of course, exam results are not the entire basis of one person’s future, but for that day they are highly significant to each individual and should be recognised as so.