Counselling services are set to swing into action tomorrow as A-level students finally discover if they have made the grade.

Bradford and Ilkley Community College will for the first time be making offers of spare places on higher education courses directly over the phone.

Careers staff from the majority of schools and colleges in the district will be on call to make sure their pupils get the best possible help.

Paula Yates, marketing officer at Careers Bradford advised students to stay calm and seek professional advice from careers officers or teachers if results were not as expected.

"It's not the end of the world if you don't get the results you wanted," she said.

"There is usually something that can be done to fix students up if not with exactly the course they wanted then one in a related area.

"The worst you can do is go and hide away and sit there and imagine the worst. There really is a great deal of help available."

Dixons CTC will have most of the senior staff on hand throughout the day to commiserate or celebrate with students. Help will be particularly orientated to dealing with clearing - the system that matches leftover higher education places with leftover students.

Pupils at Bradford Grammar School will have careers staff on hand to guide them through clearing and they will be issued with information leaflets complete with home telephone numbers of staff. BICC, which with its 511 A-level students, has the highest number of entries from a city institution, is aiming to operate a clearing hotline for its own higher education courses.

Staff from each department will be manning the phones to offer post A-level students places on the spot.

HOTLINE NUMBERS: Careers Bradford (01274) 829429 and Keighley on (01535) 210262. BICC Hotline 0800 074 8412. The Department for Education and Employment Student Choice Helpline for advice on the latest course vacancies 0800 101 901.

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