Students jump for joy at Camden School for Girls after opening their A-level results 

HUNDREDS of young people across the borough will this morning (Thursday) be nervously ripping open their GCSE results – the next step in a journey through sixth form, college or training, and into the adult world.

They belong to a cohort of children who have been schooled in “resilience,” an emergent priority in educational policy across the political spectrum.

Since the turn of this century, parties on both left and right have placed increasing emphasis on the need for children to be tougher and more adaptable.

This is a torch Sir Keir Starmer will carry into the next general election. In a recent speech to launch his education “mission”, Mr Starmer called for “a greater emphasis on creativity, on resilience, on emotional intelligence and the ability to adapt”.

This retreat into the language of feeling can be read as an inadvertent admission that the political class is no longer capable of solving the myriad problems faced by Britain.

In place of fixing these concurrent crises, many politicians seem content with ensuring the population is better able to withstand the shocks coming our way.

And implicit in this focus on “resilience” is a suggestion of weakness – a sentiment chiming with the deeply unfair portrayal of young people as “snowflakes” by some sections of the political and media class.

Of course the reality is anything but. This is a hardy generation who face challenges far greater than those encountered by their parents.

This cohort of children have survived Covid, seeing several vital academic years blighted by recurrent lockdowns, while navigating the minefield of social media.

They are also joining the ever-growing ranks of “Generation Rent”, inheriting an unprecedented housing crisis that is forcing young people to leave the areas in which they grew up.

And where parents tell stories of free university tuition and maintenance grants, today’s youth can expect to leave university with average debts of over £45,000 – and that’s before interest rates enter the equation.

And when the climate crisis and complications arising from Brexit are considered, it is difficult to see any justification for the “snowflake” label with which “Gen Z” has been so unjustly tarnished.

But it’s not all bleak: visiting young people as they open their results is an exercise in reassurance. They talk with clarity and eloquence of the challenges we face and what might be done to solve them.

It is of course a terrible form of complacency to push responsibility for fixing the world’s problems onto the shoulders of the young, but as things stand it is difficult to avoid the conclusion: the sooner they take over, the better.