IT'S summer. Rain has stopped play in the cricket. Critics are belittling the examinations system. It's quite predictable.

It is worth repeating that this regular criticism must be demoralising for both pupils and teachers.

Any improvements that teachers make are dismissed by the generally-held belief that exams are easier than they once were.

Pupils have devoted two years of their young lives to study of some subjects which might not be their favourites - do you remember the dread of double maths first thing on your timetable? Seeing their efforts sneered at is hardly likely to encourage them to get stuck into another two years of hard work.

And the traditional carping about the value of non-traditional subjects like Media Studies or Information Communication Technology or PE is misplaced. If youngsters who would otherwise be turned off by the academic nature of some subjects are enthused to study a more modern topic, this must be positive. After all, this is what good education is about - awakening enthusiasm in the next generation, be that enthusiasm about academia or sport or music or computers.

We could even say that it is a little rich to criticise the exams for not providing future employers with a reliable guide to the ability of the pupils. It would appear that because of the preponderance of passes, most employees are inventing their own grading system: anything less than five A* to C grades is now regarded as a failure.

We might even go so far as to argue that the decline in the number of children taking foreign language exams is not too much to worry about. The whole world already speaks a smattering of English and by the time our children reach our age, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet, English will be a truly universal language.

There are some fundamental problems with our exam system. It appears not to stretch the brightest, who get straight As, nor those at the lower end who are prevented from entering exams because schools fear their poorer grades will knock their league table ratings.

But this morning, instead of criticising, we'd like to offer our congratulations to those who have worked their socks off for the last two years and our encouragement to them to really get stuck into the subjects that have inspired them.