The nervous opening of the envelope, the relief when you realise you’ve sailed through after all and then the joyful celebrations with your mates.

It’s tradition on two Thursdays every August for students to discover their fate after sitting their GCSEs and A levels.

In-between last week's 2017's A-level results and GCSEs day coming up tomorrow, we’ve gone back in time to look at previous years.

We haven’t gone back far enough to get to where people didn’t bang on all the time about exams getting easier but the 2000s were still simpler times when social networking and photo-sharing were still in their infancy - Instagram hadn’t even started then, if you can imagine the world without it.

Our gallery above features 86 photos taken on actual cameras rather than smartphones between 2005 and 2009 as students across south-east London and north Kent celebrated their results.

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Maybe you’ll spot yourself in one of the pictures – if you do, we hope whatever look you were sporting at the time doesn’t make you cringe too much now.

Some of the youngsters included will now be in their late 20s or just into their 30s.

Follow News Shopper's live blog on Thursday for coverage of this year’s GCSE results.