@adrinkofwater and @SomersetS - The universities got the A-level results this morning. In most cases they will have decided today - or by Monday at the latest - who has fallen so far short that they will reject them. They will also probably have decided which near-missers (if any) they will confirm. Often this means they will take students who are one grade off, but this won't by any means be the case everywhere and some medical schools won't accept anything below an A in chemistry, regardless of how good the other grades are. Insurance choices can decide who they will reject but they can't do anything about those they will possibly accept until the firm choices have made their decisions.
Usually, but not always, firm choices will have made their decisions by Wednesday and insurance choces can then finalize their decisions about students who have been rejected by their firm choice.
Any decisions made before Thursday will be visible to your son/daughter through UCAS when the resuts go live. It is very important to look carefully at her/his full status on UCAS Track if she/he hasn't met the conditions of the offer: a university might have rejected her/him for medicine but confirmed a place on a different course. In this case, she/he might need to call the insurance choice to find out whether they will take her/him, and if the answer is yes then she/he will have to ask the first choice to release her/him from the new offer. If the insurance choice has places to fill it will probably already have spotted this and will then contact the student to ask whether she/he wants to take up her/his insurance place. It's not worth waiting for this call, though: call the medical school if in any doubt.
Occasionally we are still waiting on Thursday for firm choices to make decisions about students who have us as their insurance choice. This is because the medical schools are still waiting for some students to get priority re-marks or to provide missing documentation (e.g. occupational health questionnaires, DBS forms or GCSE certificates) and don't yet know whether they can afford to reject some near-missers. I know we will have some unsuccessful applicants going for re-mark so we won't know exactly how many places we have left to fill (if any) until they get their results.
If your son/daughter is rejected by both choices with AAB the picture isn't very hopeful. It's worth first of all calling anywhere that she/he was made an offer that she/he declined, or anywhere that she/he was interviewed but didn't get an offer. Then it's worth trying anywhere that has an AAB standard offer (I think this is only Anglia Ruskin this year, as Aston can only take home students from its dedicated widening-participation programme). Please don't let them get their hopes up about this, though: the chances of being accepted are slim. If a medical school is forced to go into Clearing to fill places it can start afresh and will usually only consider applications from people who have achieved or exceeded its standard offer. If it's doing a whole new set of interviews it won't devote time to students with AAB grades.
If, as seems from some other posts to be the case, agents working for Bulgarian medical schools have got hold of applicants' details, your daughters/sons might start getting unsolicited calls about applying to universities in eastern Europe (and possibly the Caribbean). Don't allow them to make quick decisions about this: it is something that needs to be thought over very, very carefully.
Good luck, everyone. I'm also awaiting my daughter's A-level results. She isn't doing medicine but there's still pressure to achieve the required grades.