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As long as it takes

Teaching staff
My pupils, Dave Mania and Dennis Plum, still sit raging, balding and bored in my “Illiterates R Us” class. They wear the grim bling of a “D” medallion. They are now middle aged. I am probably posthumous.

This week’s wheezes are twofold. The scrapping of the rather excellent Speaking and Listening component in the English GCSE and the condemning of pupils who can’t achieve C grade at English and Maths to staying in school until they do or for as long as it takes. You need the C to get the job in our whizzo global marketplace. Fail these exams and you Fail in Life.

All a bit punitive and pedagogically suspect.

Some pupils just hit the conceptual buffers, especially with maths. I did. It took me four goes to pass the old O level. Euclid’s postulates, Pythagoras’ theorems, Isosceles Triangles, and much else, were quite beyond my tiny brain.

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