About retirement – dispatches from the front line – Part 67

From 1986 to 1995, with one exception, one or both of my children were sitting public examinations and a stressful time it was – for me, that is, never for them as far as I could detect. Even now we have interests in annual results which we confidently (and accurately) predict will be good; excitement without the worry. This year Nephew Mikey took a First in physiology during his medical training, Number Charlie was awarded twelve grade A GCSEs, mostly starred, and our young friends Gemma and Lily secured their places at Leeds and Hull universities respectively. I felt no pain at all.

                        But how different things now are. When Mikey’s granny, a retired doctor herself and now in her nineties, heard about his First she said, “In my day they didn’t give you a BSc every time you did a bit of physiology – it’s ridiculous. If he goes on like this, by the time he qualifies he’ll have so many letters after his name there won’t be room for them all on his Harley Street notepaper.” I know the feeling.

                        When I was a schoolboy we did six or seven O Levels, stars didn’t exist, and A grades, while not rare exactly, but pretty unusual. What are we doing to our children putting them through twelve? Many – perhaps most – pupils went on to good universities (the only kind we had then) without a single A grade to their names. The universities were many fewer, and they were smaller, but with only 3% destined to go there the competition was probably less fierce.

                        I don’t subscribe to the cynics’ view that standards are falling year on year, though I do think there is something fishy about the introduction of star A grades – a sign surely of grade inflation. Nor do I accept the educational establishment’s claim that our children are getting brighter (ask a biology teacher, if you can find one, about evolution) and the teachers more brilliant. Things are not getting worse – we are still turning out world class doctors, engineers and so on after all – but nor are they improving to the extent that the proliferation of A grades are claimed to indicate.

                        However, a recent proposed change to the GCSE regime whereby 10% of marks will be allocated to be won or lost on assessment of grammar and punctuation highlights a real problem. It is only a proposal, which the teaching profession will oppose, probably successfully, but I agree with it. This summer I read a school report on a school leaver. It was excellent in that it reported on a high level of achievement, but the document itself was a disgrace. There were numerous spelling mistakes, and the deployment of apostrophes was idiosyncratic; it was the work of someone who had heard of them but who knew nothing of possession and omission, and it was shameful. At a good secondary school (not local) with which I have a slight connection a teacher in her late sixties was obliged to write all  the leavers’ reports because the standard of written English among her younger colleagues is so poor that the Head was not prepared to allow it leave the premises. That teacher has now retired. Next year, who knows?

                        So, this is why the teachers will fight the proposed reform. Grammar and punctuation have been side-lined in schools for decades, starting in the sixties, and most teachers now in service have been ill-served by this. Many will not be able to implement the reform, and they will oppose it.

                        Of course, there is one aspect of education that is now infinitely worse now than it was in my day. I paid no tuition fees, my City of Hull Major award (£100 per term) was enough to live on and on top of it I was given three return rail fares a year to Bristol, and £15 a year for books. Now it is £9000 in fees, and nothing else. I would not have been able to go.

Best wishes

Howard