A-Level results: Sheffield's class of 2024 overcame massive challenges to get their results today

The young students who opened their envelopes on August 15 were in Year 9 when schools shut due to Covid-19.

And they were the first year group to sit GCSE exams after they were cancelled for two years in a row.

One Tapton student, Rachel Hills, who earned an A*AA and will study business management at the University of York, said: “You could maybe say that we were one of the years where (things were) off a bit because we didn’t get teacher-assessed grades, however we were one of the years that spent the most time at home learning.

“Although grades wise students might be better off, there’s a lot of time we spent while we were younger not socialising at school... that lack of social time in years prior might go on to disadvantage us when we apply to jobs.”

Despite all this, the Steel City students who got their grades on Thursday have a lot to be proud of, with schools like Silverdale and Tapton both seeing more than 60 per cent of all their grades come in between A*-B.

Tapton especially has a lot to celebrate, with five of their students are heading to Oxbridge after the summer. 10 of their cohort will be studying Medicine and another five will take on Dentistry.

Head of sixth form at Tapton Andrew Wright said: “We are delighted with the A level results this year and we would like to congratulate all of our students, those who joined us from Tapton and those who joined us from schools across Sheffield. But most importantly, especially given the nationwide disturbances of recent weeks, we would like to say how proud we are of our students who now leave us as young people the world can lean on. Good luck and thank you for a fantastic two years in Sixth Form.”

Other successes included over half of Longley Park Sixth Form Academy’s 400 students earning high grades of A*s-Bs or Distinctions. They include students like Mohammed, who achieved an A* in Mathematics, A in Chemistry and A in Biology and is going on to study Medicine at University of Sheffield.

And at both Meadowhead Sixth Form and King Edward VII, a quarter of all students earned the high-flying AAB.

In fact, more than a quarter (27.8%) of all grades across the UK were awarded an A or A* grade. This was also higher than in 2019, the last year that summer exams were taken before the pandemic.

It comes after the Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in top grades in 2020 and 2021, with results based on teacher assessments instead of exams.

As predicted by some national news outlets in the week leading up to A-Level results day, more students were accepted into university or college this year, with 243,650 18-year-old applicants from the UK getting in compared to 230,600 last year - a rise of 6 per cent.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson offered her congratulations to students, telling Times Radio: "Students have been through an awful lot in recent years and they've shown tremendous resilience, and they've had fantastic support from the staff and teachers within their schools and colleges, and it's a big and exciting day for them."

Leaders in the education sector have warned that this cohort of young people has had to overcome a series of challenges - and those from disadvantaged backgrounds have been hit the worst.