Exam qualifications

I went to an old-fashioned grammar school that from 1967 turned itself into a sixth-form college, gradually phasing out younger pupils. When I left in the summer of 1970 the process was almost complete. I was then very nearly eighteen, had taken my three A-Levels, and was awaiting the results. 

Much depended on them. After a very good start as an eleven year old first former in 1963 - I was joint top of the form in my first year - my performance had slid steadily downwards. I hated school, and this was the consequence. I had become a reluctant participant, longing for freedom. I got poor marks in all my mock exams. I failed half my O-Levels, and achieved only scrape grades in the rest. I wasn't a troublemaker - in class I was a quiet, attentive pupil. It was the ethos and atmosphere of grammar school life that I so disliked. The rules, the compulsion. But I was a closet rebel only, nursing my real thoughts in secret.   

Mum and Dad were dismayed at my declining performance, but I revealed nothing to them. I'd already got into the habit of hiding many things from my parents that I didn't want them to know about. Mum and Dad were caring, intelligent people, and I'm sure they loved me. But with a teenager's cussedness I couldn't let them into my heart, and share all the dark things there. Instinctively I knew it would be a mistake, with awful consequences. It would place me in their power.

At the same time, I could clearly see that my future life absolutely relied on good A-Level results. So I worked my socks off getting them. Well, mostly! Exam days came and went. I had good feelings about some of them. But I knew when my efforts had been weak, and might not get me a pass mark. Fortunately I hadn't applied to go to university. I wanted instead to go to work, and start earning money, and (above all) escape the educational system and join the 'adult world'. The future still looked daunting, but armed with good A-Levels I'd get a head start as a new recruit.

I still have that slip of paper that told me my A-Level results: an A pass (with distinction, as it turned out) in Geography, a B for English Literature, and a B for Art. I knew that I could definitely have done more for the English and Art exams, and could have got an A grade for all three. But this slightly lesser result would still do nicely.

In fact it was much better than Mum and Dad had dared hope for. Finally, Mum had results to shout about to her friends. Dad glowed with satisfaction. And I breathed a sigh of relief - I was now bulletproof so far as getting a decent job was concerned, and from that would flow all sorts of pleasures. The results were also proof to myself that, if I wanted to, and worked for it, I could do well.

Well, that was 1970. This is 2020, fifty years later. I imagine that my three A-Levels wouldn't cut much ice now, after so long. I was never sure what they said about my intelligence, or suitability for a job. I grew to thinking that one's personality and personal qualities mattered just as much as paper qualifications. In my career I met many new recruits - I even sat on recruitment panels from time to time - and I was never impressed with applicants who may have possessed a string of good exam results, but had a limp or lacklustre personal presence, or poor social skills, or an unrealistic attitude that the world owed them a living regardless of personal effort or talent. Even so, many of them were taken on. Which showed that paper qualifications carried a lot of weight. 

And it seems that this remains the case. Hence the present frantic worry over this year's results, which have had to be cobbled together using a process based primarily on teacher's opinions. Many a student will be regretting that they didn't play the game, carefully keeping up an impression that they were serious about their subject, and deserving of a high grade. It has crossed my mind that my dismal mock exam results in the late 1960s would have doomed me to a poor job - or no job - if I were being grade-assessed now in virus-haunted 2020. 

Then there's the added problem of bias - the assumption that students from a poor background, or a 'wrong' background of any sort, or just the 'wrong' type of student - are somehow less intelligent, and unable to gain the highest academic grades. That wouldn't have been my problem back in 1970. I was white, middle-class, and I lived in a decent part of the city. My father was a senior Civil Servant. And I spoke well and behaved well, even if my academic performance was no better than average. That marked me out for good things in 1970. But in 2020? 

So much has changed. I've lost track of the way schools are organised nowadays, and how exams are run. I don't know what my three A-Levels would be equivalent to. Or - more to the point - what an employer might think of them. Whether they would mean anything. I suspect that if ever I had to find work, it would need to be on a self-employed basis, because no modern employer would want me. Either they would dismiss me as grossly unqualified - no degree - or assume (bias again) that being older I'd present too many health or attitude problems, and couldn't possibly fit in with a largely younger team, nor cope with 'modern technology'. Sigh.