Firstly, this isn’t sour grapes. I went to a very prestigious RG university and was always the annoying girl with my hand up at school (ah misspent youth 😂). However, in almost all the adults I know now their academic outcomes have had literally no bearing on their lives now in their late 30’s and early 40’s. In my own life, my A’s at A level count for absolutely nothing when my part time teacher salary is absolutely dwarfed by my non academic DH’s who spent most of his time at school messing around and smoking behind the bike sheds. At work, a lot of my colleagues didn’t do that well in their own exams and now do the exact same job as me. Many friends who work in trade jobs having left school at 16 earn very impressive salaries meanwhile others with top grades in their exams earn low money. One particular example that always sticks out to me is a lady who lives down the street, who’s also a teacher, absolutely bombed her exams as she spent the whole time partying (whilst I spent most of year 13 diligently writing up notes and doing practice essays) and yet we ended up living on the same street doing the exact same job. I’m not bitter about this at all, I absolutely love my life however, I do regret not just having more fun at school and not worrying about my grades because it really hasn’t paid off. Obviously, for certain jobs such as medicine too grades are needed but for the vast majority it truly doesn’t matter at all. I have definitely learned my lesson on it with my own DC and have never excessively pushed them and my main priority has always been their social progress/happiness at school rather than grades, which I think will honestly stand them in far better stead than getting all 9’s in their GCSE’s. Aibu?