Opening the Envelope

Today is GCSE results day. I took the worst Mum in the world route and went up to the school with H to collect them. A couple of hundred sixteen year old girls in the gym, most in jubilant clusters, some teary, all talking too loud. H wanted to leave as soon as she could, but she’s never liked a din. She can proudly sign up for her much anticipated college course this afternoon.


Inevitably it took me back to my own results, O’levels and a solitary insurance maths CSE back in 1984. I waited for them to arrive in the post, and cried when I got them. They weren’t bad, but I failed RE which seemed important at the time. Strange to say, I don’t think it’s held me back too much, I mean, there was a job I went for in a trendy 1991 baguette shop that I wasn’t offered so I can’t say for certain.....

On the plus side, I had my first orgasm that I hadn’t given myself that day. Nick and I drank cheap wine under a tree in Victoria Park. There were squirrels and sunshine to accompany the dry humping and sneaky shenanigans. Nick had no idea of what he had achieved, and I didn’t inform him for years afterwards. We were both innocents and far less well informed than we thought.

I went home to give the good news to my Mum, who took it well. The exam result, I mean.



Well done to everyone who got their GCSEs today. You took the courageous step to open the envelope.

Don't you just love this song?

Ready for It?

Monday 30.11.09

My ear was caught by a news item today. Business leaders were expressing concern that sixteen year olds leaving school were unprepared for the world of work. An assumption was expressed that teenagers should be prepared for 'the global marketplace' and that naturally, teachers were to blame.

I understand that business leaders would like to have a workforce at their disposal, fully able to make a contribution to the global market place on their behalf. A workforce of sixteen year olds is an economical and easily exploited option. The minimum wage for a young person is £3.57 per hour as opposed to £5.80 at age 22. Even these low wages can be avoided by employing the young person as a modern apprentice at £95 per week full time. I don't think that employers have any right to expect very much for that kind of money. Having watched Nina get through her year as a modern apprentice with her colleagues, it seems to me that the employer got extremely good value, was basing the majority of its staffing on the apprentices whilst providing a minimal training experience, and once they were no longer apprentices, sending them on their way to get a fresh batch in.

It used to be that young people would leave school and be employed by a small business. The employer would take them on accepting that they were only able to do simple tasks, they would learn the skills of the trade slowly, and benefit from the experience of more experienced employees. There was a butcher's boy, not one qualified butcher and twenty trainees a year. People stayed in jobs and filled dead men's shoes. Schools provided education, employers provided training. Times have moved on, but I still think that school should be about more than training up fodder for employers to make use of.

I wasn't much use to my employers at sixteen. I fitted in, did chores, and tried to keep up. It served to tell the time, to be able to read, and to add up (although my mental arithmetic improved greatly as I calculated the price of orders for fish and chips and gave change). Mr Lee didn't expect too much of me, and in turn didn't pay much. He took care of me when I was slow, or stupid, or sloppy. I did my best. It was a good arrangement. My point is that as a fifty-something year old man, he knew what could be expected of a sixteen year old girl -education or no education - it wasn't much. So now its 2009 and here's the big news: sixteen year olds are still sixteen year olds. Business has changed, they haven't.

Mr Lee honed my ability to be polite to the general public and to wipe a table effectively. Of the rest of what I became, I owe a fair bit to the bits of education that no employer ever believed useful. Aged around five, Mr Riley found me drawing a picture of a witch and took an interest in a story that I had made in my head. That was the beginnings of a confidence that I could order and express my thoughts, and the finding that there were kindred spirits out there in the world outside of my family. I got my first go on a sewing machine aged eleven at secondary school. I was rubbish, and the student teacher lost patience with me when I clogged the machine for the third time in ten minutes. I loved the idea of making something though, and this, combined with a determination to prove her wrong about my (in)abilities started me off on a hobby that is still with me. Shakespere is not much use in business. In spite of that, I can still quote from The Merchant of Venice and continue to ponder its themes. I'm not sure is it did much to shape my views on power, equality, fate, greed, religion, or love but it must have done something. At least it went towards me knowing who I was; that I was more likely to be mates with Shylock than Bassanio. I'm glad I got an education in stead of indoctrination into how to become a corporate lackey.

School leavers not ready for the world of work? Should they get lessons in office politics, dealing with difficult bosses, clockwatching? Time enough to learn those things on the job. Let the kids learn to calculate the area of a parallelogram whilst reciting William Blake. It'll do 'em good.

On a different theme, I genuinely do plan to do the Hundred Days to Make Me a Better Person project http://www.hundreddays.net/ . I will be committing to stand on a different street each day, and make a photograph of it. I hope to blog about it a bit too. I hope it will release a bit of creativity, or at least improve my geography. Join in?

Thursday 26.3.09

A sleepy, but lovely day with Nick was thrown off course by Some news from Nina's friend A. He has been having some problems with his A'levels and has decided to spend an extra year on them. I found out through a jaunty, but cryptic message on Twitter. I offered commiserations and support although A is unlikely to accept any help I could give. I like A very much. He shines with energy, creativity and individual spirit, just as he did when I first met him, aged about 8. Before his voice broke, this was called 'silly' by the adults and a lot of his contemporaries. He was funny, but irritating. This last couple of years, his humour and writing style has blasted ahead, and is often dazzlingly sophisticated. It seems trite to say that, like thousands of sons of working class single parents living in inner cities, he faces challenges. He does have a lot to deal with though, and the most difficult is in the area of self confidence which comes easier to kids who have a middle-income-middle-England background.

I'm surprised at how concerned I am for him. I think I had been depending on his progress as I still regret not being able to help Nina to achieve what I still feel she could have done at A'level. I see her taking what seems to me to be the harder, longer road through less than minimum wage apprenticeship, and un-challenging training, working for people with whom she has little in common. In spite of my feelings, Nina is happier now, and I am proud she has stuck with it. I sort of hoped that A would hit the bases she missed and that I could celebrate with him, although I know that I have no claim on him at all. I also know that there are lots of ways to achieve, and I am being a qualifications snob. Considering my own paucity of academic achievement I ought to be ashamed. I redeem myself, perhaps, in that I know in my bones that A will achieve something very special with his life because that is his spirit. I have tried to tell him this, just a little less effusively because I don't want to scare him.

Yesterday, I found out that of the teachers who taught me O and A'levels at the foetid institution that was Truro High School, only Mr Fee remains. According to my Mum, he does remember me. When he taught me, he was a young teacher of in his mid 20's. He was the object of many schoolgirl crushes, being affable and not bad looking. In common with all independent schools, most of the teachers at THS did national service (or their brothers did), so Mr Fee had the almost unique attraction of having his own teeth. I never fancied him though, my heart being already given to Mr Tinson, a teacher at my former Comprehensive where my loyalties lay.

I woke this morning remembering some of the things that Mr Fee taught me. Passages from the Merchant of Venice, Jane Eyre, Ernest Hemmingway, critical thinking around films, to watch the technical aspects of my written work. I was thrilled when he once said that I had an enviable writing style, and was less than thrilled when on another occasion he said that my observations were adequate for O'level. Seeing his face on the THS website, I have been reminded that my creative writing was very strong, and of how much I enjoyed it. I am tempted to email him, just to say.. what exactly?.. 'Thanks to you I remember all this stuff, and in spite of the encouragement I didn't fulfil my potential to write anything except reports, and I never did improve my spelling. Oh, and by the way, Mr Fee, what were you doing with your left hand moving deep in your trouser pocket while you read us Anthony and Cleopatra?'