A-LEVEL results day in Wirral will be very different this year, as social distancing rules will prevent the usual crowds of celebrating students from gathering.

Wirral’s schools have chosen a variety of different ways to manage this Thursday's results day safely, while ensuring students are fully supported in making crucial choices for the future.

Calday Grange Grammar School will not be having any pupils attend to pick up their results. Instead, students will receive them via email.

On the other hand, students at Wirral Grammar School for Girls and St Anselm’s College can pick up their results from the school from 8am in the morning, with both telling pupils to respect social distancing as they navigate the school.

Birkenhead Sixth Form College and West Kirby Grammar School are arranging appointments for students who want to pick up their results in person to do so, although the Birkenhead college expects most of its pupils to find out their results through their accounts on its internal portal.

Pupils must collect their results on their own and cannot be accompanied into the school by any relatives.

This policy is in place to prevent excessive gatherings of people inside schools and enable social distancing to take place.

On top of the changes to the format of results day, the way A-Levels are awarded will be completely different this year.

Rather than grades being given based on exam performance, they will be awarded based on a formula using mock exam grades, classwork, non-exam assessments and any other relevant evidence.

Teachers will use this information to rank their students and calculate their grades.

These grades will then be moderated by the exam board depending on how the school has performed overall in recent years – a process that has caused major controversy in Scotland with students in less affluent areas being marked down more harshly than those in richer places.

The grades awarded this year will have equal status to grades in previous years and should also be treated the same way as they always have been by universities, colleges and employers.