So late in the summer, the holidays can begin in earnest. Results for more than five million GCSEs spilt out of some 600,000 brown envelopes yesterday morning, scanned quickly and breathlessly by boys as well as girls (generic press pictures notwithstanding), and the results were good.

A fifth of all grades were As or A*s. Two thirds were C or better after the biggest percentage rise in so-called “good” grades for nearly 20 years. The overall pass rate at all grades from G to A was 98.4 per cent. Bravo.

This year's 16-year-olds and their teachers (and Israel Nwisi, 6, who passed in maths) deserve a moment's respite from the argument about what their results mean. It is clear that they worked hard for them; perhaps even harder than ever.

There is no doubt, either, that if GCSEs were the only yardstick at Year 11 it would be hard to gauge changes in overall standards and to identify the very highest achievers. But they are not. BTECs and other vocational qualifications are in use within the GCSE system, not as dumbed-down GCSEs but precisely as vocational alternatives. The most academic pupils are increasingly sitting International GCSEs (I-GCSEs) as more stretching than the domestic version.

Universities and employers understand the process, and are benefiting from it, but Government must keep up. It should require the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to recognise the I-GCSE. Parents, meanwhile, are personalising their children's education so that more of them excel at what they do. In the process they are proving that excellence need not be rationed.