SO everyone got their A-level results this week.

It is a time of immense stress for teenagers. I remember waiting for my own results, knowing firstly that I hadn’t done as well as I knew I could have done, and secondly, that my brainbox twin had aced all her exams.

But I have to echo the sentiments of one headteacher who this week told his pupils: “Don’t worry if you didn’t get the results you wanted – they don’t really matter, anyway.”

He’s right. I’ve been to plenty of interviews in my life. Not once have I been quizzed about my performance in General Studies in 1998.

Some companies are even doing away with CVs all together when recruiting. They are more interested in the person. They want employees with people skills – not a B-plus in biology. Do they still do B-plusses?

Any idiot can pass an exam. You don’t need intelligence, just a good short term memory.

I got an A* in Latin GCSE when I was 16. Latin.

Has it helped me in life? No. Can I remember any of it now? Definitely not.

I just worked very hard for the month leading up to the exam. I memorised whole passages of translation – the words of Pliny recounting the destruction of Pompeii I think (the gist of it was that a volcano went off big time and lots of Romans died).

All my GCSEs did was give me permission to do my A-levels. All my A-levels did was give me permission to do a degree.

And then I did my degree and I still had no idea what to do. No employers seemed to care that I now knew a bit about physics and had a piece of paper to prove it. So I was back home with lots of debt (not nearly as much as people are getting into now) and no job.

Exams are simply hoops that we have to jump through – because that’s the way it is.

But a lot of the most successful people flunked at school. They were independent minded and the rules and regulations of the exam structure did not fit with them.

There are no avenues to help develop budding entrepreneurs in schools – everyone just has to fit in to the same rigid structure – so they just have to figure it out for themselves in later years.

Our whole exam-focussed education system needs an overhaul. But is anyone brave enough to do it?