High grades are the start of a longer road

For A-levels achievers and other students, learning should be a life-long journey

Students at the Dubai British School receive their A-level results. Pawan Singh / The National

A-Level and AS-Level pupils from across the UAE have finally received their results. The National has interviewed a few of them who said they felt ecstatic about their achievements and looked forward to pursuing their higher education in the United Kingdom and other countries.

We should all be proud to see such results in our schools. In some schools, such as those operated by Gems, A-Level results and pass rates exceeded UK national averages. As the Gems chief education officer, Sir Christopher Stone, said: “These results are an indication that our students are well prepared for the next stage in their educational journey.”

The students – and their teachers and parents – who worked so hard to get to this point can now pick up their qualifications and begin the next stage of their educational journey. Many will complete their studies in the UAE or eventually return here, either because they are Emiratis or because they continue to feel the pull of a country in which they spent their formative years. There is a lot to celebrate.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that – whisper it – formal education is only part of the story. Learning is a lifelong process and as technology changes so rapidly, what young adults learn in university this year will already be obsolete by the time they graduate. (Parents who are struggling to convince their teenagers to continue on to higher education may wish to skip that message.) Education is only part of the story – a vital part, for sure – but learning to keep curious about the world is equally important.

Students whose grades were not quite what they hoped for should take comfort from those words. Academic achievement is certainly not everything, and many of the greatest minds have also faced setbacks in their education. The most important thing is to understand that these are temporary disappointments – grades at 18 cannot, do not and will not define your future path.

Continuing education, in whatever form, is vital, whether that is through a different university degree, professional qualifications, or the experience of learning through work. In the end, the companies of the future will not hire people based on grades alone: but on resilience, discipline and creativity. Those are the qualities that, after all, brought the country’s teenagers the success they tasted this weekend.