Advice for A-level students

Congratulations, A-level students. You've just - postal strikes allowing - received your results. Hopefully they were all you hoped for, or at least all you deserved.

Doubtless you're part of the school year that has achieved the best set of results since records began. The best grades ever. Of course you are: this happens every year.

If you are female, blonde and collected your results wearing a crop top, you'd better make sure your parents buy a copy of The Telegraph tomorrow - you'll be on the front page, grinning ecstatically, hugging your equally photogenic friends.

Bu when the euphoria fades, take a look at where you are.

You've just completed what until a few years ago was known as "further education". It used to only be a small percentage of students who - instead of leaving school at 16 - chose to stay on and study some more, taking their education to an Advanced Level. Advanced, see? Not Ordinary.

Now, of course, pretty much everyone goes on to do A-levels. The alternative is the tills at Tesco.

And soon, if Labour get their way, pretty much everyone will carry even further with their further education.

Tony Blair (you may have studied him in Media Studies - he's an actor who played Prime Minister on telly for a few years) decided that 50% of you should go to University. It's not really clear why, but the Labour party have continued to pursue this dream.

However, the same Labour party has also taken all the money your parents paid in tax for the last 12 years and pissed it up the wall. The pot is empty. You know, like when your allowance is all gone, but its only the 19th and there's no more til next month and your phone needs topping up. Like that, but for the whole country.

So, while they want everyone to go to university, there aren't actually enough places. The government wants you to go to university, but you'll have to fight really hard against your friends (and against a shitload of foreign students) to actually get a place.

And even the places there are aren't paid for by the government - there's no money, remember?

So, if you get a place, would you mind paying for it yourself? It's OK that you haven't got any money (why would you? You've been in 'further education'), you can borrow it, and pay it back if you ever do get a proper job.

Lets face it, you poor sods, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Education in the UK is fucked. Spectacularly, royally, comprehensively. (Bad choice of word, that last one.)

And you are the unfortunate victims, right in the middle of a badly designed, poorly built sausage machine.

CF's advice to you is as follows. You'll be able to vote in the next General election, if the unelected Prime Minister ever allows another.

As you walk to the polling station, spend some time thinking about how hard it was to get those A-levels, in poorly funded, under-equipped schools that have been plagued with endless change, pointless tinkering and 'new initiatives' every year.

Think of how pissed off you were when you found out that your AAB was not as good as you'd thought because every single person you know got the same. Because of the relentless pressure from this government to ensure that "all shall have prizes".

Remember how angry you were when Oxford turned you down, because your sixth form college was so popular it had to turn some kids away, and that makes it "Selective" and that means you get pushed down the list in favour of some kid from the school by the sink estate down the road.

Then think of which party, which ministers, spent the last 12 years creating this monstrous, complete, utter fucking mess. A mess you're stuck in the middle of for three more years. A mess you'll still be paying for when you're in your thirties.

Then vote.

.