Are ministers right to say: don't worry too much about exam results?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2023
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's A-level results day and the message from the Education Secretary is to urge students not to worry too much about the results, that no-one will ask about them in 10 years' time.
The PM has also said that there are plenty of other options available to those who didn't get the grades they need. But is this really the message for ministers to send to kids who have been studying for these things for years?
And would they be saying the same to their own kids? We also analyse whether this was the year to revert to a 2019 marking system, with a generation still deeply affected by the pandemic.
Jon and Lewis also discuss the life and broadcasting legacy of chat show king Michael Parkinson who has died at the age of 88. He invented the chat show format for UK television. We talk through the changes in TV which have taken place over the last half century and why we won't see Parky's like again.
Editor: Tom Hughes
Senior Producer: Gabriel Radus
Producer: Laura FitzPatrick
Planning: Alex Barnett
Social Media Editor: Georgia Foxwell
Video Production: Will Gibson-Smith & Rory Symon
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:08.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:15.3 | The Master returns first. Parkinson's The Talk of BBC One. |
| 0:40.9 | Music returns first Parkinson's the talk of BBC one now as I now as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, all you need for a talk show three guests with an interesting tale to tell, one of whom can do a turn. He made it sound so simple, |
| 0:46.8 | didn't he? Michael Parkinson there, doing his first show when his show returned in 1998, |
| 0:53.2 | distilling the essence of what a chat show, a talk show was. |
| 0:57.6 | And when you heard that music, you knew what was coming. It's been announced that Michael |
| 1:01.8 | Parkinson has died at the age of 80s. And for so many, he defined what a chat show was and changed |
| 1:09.7 | broadcasting forever. |
| 1:11.3 | He was an important cultural figure. |
| 1:14.4 | The show came on in the 1970s when I was a kid growing up in a suburban living room |
| 1:19.4 | and he brought the world of culture, the world of music, the world of arts, the world of cinema, |
| 1:25.9 | the world of theatre into everybody's of cinema, the world of theatre, into everybody's room, |
| 1:30.0 | and enriched an awful lot of lives. And so on today's episode, we're going to consider |
| 1:35.5 | the cultural legacy of Parky. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:43.6 | The news agents. |
| 1:45.5 | It's John. |
| 1:46.3 | And it's Lewis. |
| 1:47.1 | And later in the show, we are going to be talking about A-level results day. |
| 1:51.8 | It's that sort of fixed point in the calendar. |
| 1:54.0 | But there are really interesting things about and interesting things to say and draw out from |
| 1:59.3 | the class of 2023 who are kind of supposed to be the return to normal, i.e. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Global, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Global and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.