James, Earl of Wessex Heads to Royal Agricultural University After A-Level Results
Buckingham Palace has confirmed that James, Earl of Wessex will enrol at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester this autumn to study Rural Land & Property Management, after collecting A-level results that met his offer on the same Thursday morning as thousands of school pupils across the UK (Hello!).
The Palace statement said the 18-year-old "having achieved the grades he needed" would go straight to university without taking a gap year. His exact A-level grades have not been disclosed. James completed his Sixth Form studies at Radley College, a boarding school in Oxfordshire, and received his results there on 13 August.
He is the first member of the British royal family to attend the Royal Agricultural University, which sits in the Gloucestershire market town of Cirencester, roughly nine miles from Gatcombe Park, the home of his aunt, the Princess Royal. The degree programme he has chosen covers the management of rural estates, farms and landed property — the kind of landholdings that sit at the centre of the royal family's own agricultural portfolio, from the Sandringham estate in Norfolk to the Duchy of Cornwall.
James is the younger child of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. His father, Prince Edward, was created Earl of Wessex on his marriage in 1999; when King Charles granted Edward the dukedom of Edinburgh in 2023, the lesser title of Earl of Wessex passed to James (BBC News). His older sister, Lady Louise Windsor, also went straight to university after receiving her A-level results in 2022.
The Duke and Duchess were elsewhere on official duties the day their son collected his results, attending the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham before travelling to Edinburgh on Friday.
There is a practical thread running through the announcement. The Sun reported earlier this month that James had secured a summer job working as a farmhand at King Charles's Sandringham estate — a placement that now reads as a precursor to a degree in rural land management rather than a holiday diversion. Lady Louise, meanwhile, was reported by the Daily Mail to have earned £6.63 per hour in a summer job of her own after finishing her A-levels, though that figure carries a lower-confidence source date.
James has been edging into a more visible role within the royal family over the past year. He walked alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Easter Sunday service in April and took a prominent place at a royal wedding in June. His exact public role remains a matter for his parents and the Palace; under the current arrangement, children of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh are styled as children of a duke rather than as prince or princess, though James holds a courtesy earldom.
The Court Circular, the daily record of royal engagements, briefly listed James himself as Colonel of the Scots Guards in June, an error corrected when it emerged the appointment belonged to Prince Edward (People). A slip of the pen rather than a promotion — but one that suggests the household is still calibrating where the young earl's name appears in the official record.
