IT is time for our annual message to A-Level students who have just had their results. Our message is the same every year, but most of the intended recipients are not, so we shall carry on.

To all of you who have achieved the grades you needed for the job or higher education place you wanted, we send our congratulations.

We also congratulate everyone whose results were better than expected. If new opportunities now become available, we hope you will grasp and make full use of them.

Some of you reading this will not have achieved the grades you hoped for, and may now be in the throes of disappointment or a sense of failure.

If you fit this description we invite you, as ever, to look out of the nearest window and note that the sky is still in its conventional place and has not fallen in. There may be rain falling from it, what with the summer we’ve been having, but that’s a different matter.

The grades set against your name do not define you and they are not a final verdict against you. There is absolutely nothing to prevent you from retaking the exams next year should you wish. A year may feel like an eternity at the moment, but we promise you it is anything but.

Alternatively, you may decide to do something else entirely, in which case you will not be alone. Any number of extremely successful people found themselves in exactly the same position as you in their late teens, and some went on to change the whole world for the better.

Whatever your results yesterday, please enjoy being in a position to choose your future with plenty of time to spare, and ignore any jaded older people who would have you believe young people today don’t know they’re born.

They’re only jealous.

Good luck and all success in whatever you do.