You never forget those exams - or waiting for the results
It's a long time ago, almost eighty years, since the August day I went back to Cardiff High School to collect my exam results - my CWB or Central Welsh Board. Like all my friends I was nervous.
Those results would decide my career and life. They could have been better but I had passed, an achievement considering the war had seriously interrupted my education - four moves in four years, switching from London to Cardiff. Two months later I started my reporting career.
Rosemary, my wife, told me that in 1944 she had to go to a solicitor's office in Penarth with her friends to write down her results.
If only the UK's governments had been so well prepared
Robert had an even more worrying time 40 years ago this month. He had to wait until we came back from a family holiday in America to find out his O level results, with the results sitting on the doormat. He says the drive home from the Severn Bridge was very stressful. A decade earlier, Beverley collected her O level results at Twickenham County grammar school. Both did well in O and A levels.
So I understand how young people in Wales are feeling this year. Never before has the experience been so uncertain, so important. This is another wartime - caused by the pandemic.
Young people's education throughout the world has been disastrously interrupted.
The worst affected are the pupils whose crucial examinations were cancelled. Their future is being decided by governments, struggling to evolve a fair marking system. A seemingly impossible task judging by the results first announced in Scotland.
The plan was to use pupil assessment by teachers and computer analysis of school record, but it has been a disaster in Scotland.
A 25% downgrading of marking caused and outcry and the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, abruptly changed the rules so that no-one has apparently lost out. That, too, has been ridiculed.
Forewarned by the Scottish experience, the Welsh government announced the day before the results were due that mock exam results could determine grades.
With 40% downgrades, this has not solved the problem, with thousands of students worried, especially those who were looking forward to chosen subjects at university.
The one bright spot is that universities have plenty of spaces due to the loss of overseas students.
Now it is being claimed that it is being made too easy.
Who would want to be running education?
No comments:
Post a Comment