At the chalkface: Dave Mania and the mockeries

Dave Mania – PhD in Mayhem – ponders on the looming mocks. He seems to have been doing – and failing – a mock exam all his life and has had an ample sufficiency of them. He is still working – well, not working – towards Level 3c and can’t see why another exam will be other than another catastrophe. But maybe there’s a glimmer of hope. There might just be a way out.

He’s not the only one who’s had enough. Miss Jupe, his lovely tutor, also has. She’s just been talking in PSHE about “wellbeing” and the lack thereof in English schools. She confessed that teaching only to the test is driving her nuts and quoted Lord Gus O’Donnell, former head of the civil service. Gus has also had enough. He laments our “addiction” to exams, which cause stress, anxiety and failure: “We are sleepwalking into a deepening crisis.” Yep. We are hatching a “troubled generation”. Yep. All good stuff, your lordship, but we know this. We’ve known it since 1988 with the concoction of the National Curriculum. Dave knows it. Miss Jupe knows it. Dave is much more than a measurable outcome.