It’s A-level results day and I’m fully prepared for my two favourite annual occurrences: photographers asking blonde teenage girls to joyfully bounce in the air, and well-meaning and/or smug successful middle-aged adults talking about how they failed their exams but it worked out fine for them.

As Jeremy Clarkson tweeted this morning: “If your A-level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us, and I’m currently on a superyacht in the Med.”

With the news that the gap between graduate and non-graduate wages is showing signs of decreasing, this year seems ripe for embracing the idea that qualifications aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Yet this response to apparent educational failure slides dangerously close to the mantra that infects how we view success: “Roll up your sleeves. If you try hard enough, you’ll get where you need to go.” The problem is that this is entirely class-blind: pretending that life looks the same from each rung on the socio-economic ladder.

Adoration of grammar schools aside, we are slowly coming round to the reality that circumstances – from having a desk to work at in a secure home to what food your parents can feed you – affect your ability to achieve good grades at school. But if we’re really going to get to grips with Britain’s ongoing scandal of unequal life chances, we need to admit that it’s easier to succeed if you’re wealthy – and it’s easier to fail but recover.

“Easier” here is the life equivalent of a crash mattress: if your parents can afford to pay your rent while you take an internship in the media, fund a gap year abroad while you reconsider your options, or introduce you to the chief exec they went to school with, traditional routes such as qualifications and a reliable career don’t always seem a matter of life and death. There’s a confidence that, even if exams or a job go wrong, there are always other options – perhaps because, for a chosen few, there are.

Abolishing maintenance grants and scrapping nursing bursaries are making university seem a distant dream for some

Telegraph journalist Toby Young talks of how he failed his O-levels but, he claims, managed to get into Oxford university “by mistake”. I’m sure plenty of kids whose dads stack shelves in Asda rather than sit as a life peer, as Young’s did, will be gifted the same “mistake” today.

Of course, a formal education is no guarantee of a fulfilling career or decent wage, and disappointing A-level results are not the end of the world (really, they’re not). But focusing on individual examples of success distracts from the bigger picture: the multiple obstacles that rig the system and lets society off the hook for eliminating them.

Rather than platitudes, or the denigration of the value of university degrees, we need to address the real problems. The way we structure educational opportunities – everything pushed towards our teenage years – is no way to bring out a person’s potential. If we want anyone but the wealthy to have the chance to fall and get back up again, we need to put resources towards education at various stages in life: to make it easier to re-train, take exams later, or move into different jobs.

As it is, it’s hard enough to do it even when you’re 18 – and the government has decided to make it even harder. Measures such as abolishing maintenance grants and scrapping nursing bursaries – often a key opportunity for women who missed out first time round to take up education – are increasingly making university seem a distant dream if you’re working-class.

Meanwhile, the building blocks of life chances are being removed. Social housing waiting lists and the ongoing removal of young people’s housing benefit combined with rocketing private rents, mean that people in their 20s no longer even have the foundation of a decent, affordable place to live. Introducing a national living wage for all but the under-25s makes it hard to earn enough to pay the bills – whether you’re working to help fund university or want the alternative of going straight into a full-time job.

However you’ve done today – or did back when it was your turn – be proud of what you achieved and optimistic of what is ahead. But spare us the platitudes of nonchalance and anomalies. The truth is that we live in a country with a warped understanding of fair life chances. All young people deserve better.