Angry Gcse Result Parents .....

[Smowball]

I don't know about all of you but we have a local FB Page for our town and you can ask anything relevant to the area. Well you can imagine after yesterday's GCSE results have sunk in there have been bragging parents, which I understand to a degree. But today there is a really really irate woman . Her son got a D in maths last year and he re sat it this year. Yesterday he got a - F. She's gone mental, going to report examination board blah lab. Bless him, maybe he is just no good at maths. But all his friends can see this , all his neighbours ........ Feel sorry for him.

[woofgang]

That’s interesting. I went to a “Direct Grant” Grammar school (Grey Coat Hospital) and none of the school paid fees. As I understand it, the “Direct Grant” bit meant that the money given by government went directly to the school and bypassed the local council which meant that the school had no catchment area and could take children from anywhere without having to give preference to children who lived in the area.

[Buenchico]

JD33 & Divebuddy:
Actually the 'ordinary' (state) grammar school I attended did everything possible to seem 'posh'. We were actively discouraged from associating with the 'common' boys who attended secondary modern schools and our school only had sporting fixtures against independent schools (and just a few other carefully selected state grammar schools, or the army, etc), and never against any secondary modern schools.

Some 'common' activities were totally frowned upon. For example any boy who played, in his own time, for an organised soccer team risked immediate expulsion. ("The Association game, boys, is only for common children. Young gentlemen, such as you will only play rugger. Rugger is the name of the game, boys, and you must never forget it"). Even being overheard talking about the fortunes of Ipswich Town FC was likely to get one into trouble and, in seven years at a school with 800 pupils, I never knew a single one who admitted to attending a match at Portman Road. It simply wasn't acceptable!

[Jackdaw33]

I do not boast about my school, I merely tell my educational history.

[Buenchico]

^^^ Likewise, JD33.

I loved my time at my grammar school but, having subsequently taught in a comprehensive, I learnt to see it for what it really was. i.e. an 'exam machine', with no concept of 'pastoral care', which was determined to segregate its pupils from mainstream society, rather than to integrate them into it.

[Jackdaw33]

The Girls' School was next door with a through corridor, with the dining hall at the end. We had to walk outside and into the dining hall. Entrance via the main door to the school and being allowed to walk through the girls' school was a privilege strictly reserved for sixth-formers.

[Caran]

My daughter went to a direct grant Grammer school. It was a fee paying school,
But I didn't have to pay as I was divorced then and my earnings were below the threshold so she got a grant. I also managed to get a nursery to cover the costs of uniforms.

[Caran]

^^^ this was in the early 70‘s,

[Buenchico]

>>> When it emerged that I was quite good at sport my life was transformed and I never looked back

I got to see it from the other end of the spectrum, Divebuddy. I was rubbish at PE. (I could never do a forward roll and I still can't). I was also pathetic at most sports (which wasn't helped by the fact that I'm short-sighted and can't see much of what's going on when, for understandable safety reasons, I wasn't permitted to wear my specs on a sports field).

The only thing I was really good at was cross country running. One day my dream of getting into a school team suddenly looked as if it might come true when the Head of PE announced that the first three runners back from the cross country course would make up the school team for the county championship on the following weekend. We were to complete the course, note the time on the stop-clock in the changing room upon our arrival and enter it against our names on the clipboard next to it. I ran my heart out, arrived back second, entered my name and time on the sheet and immediately went to the toilet to throw up because I was so exhausted. However I felt a tremendous sense of achievement and I was confident that it had all been worth it.

Alas, when the Head of PE read out the names of the boys in the school team, my name wasn't mentioned. I put my hand up and pointed out that I'd come second, only to be told, in front of the whole year group "You can't have come second. You're rubbish at PE, so you must have cheated and I don't like cheats!"

I wanted to cry but I knew that "young gentlemen don't cry". I desperately wanted to talk to someone but, because there was no 'pastoral care' system, there was nobody I felt that I could talk to. I still hate that teacher but at least I feel that it improved my own teaching in that:
(a) I made it a rule that I would never accuse a child of doing something unless I had clear proof of it ; and
(b) I tried to ensure that any pupil who felt 'hard done by' another teacher could always come to talk to me about it (and that I would try to mediate between them, even if that meant getting on the wrong side of a colleague).

[zebo]

Jackdaw, I recall doing Use of English as a part of the A level course, it was done by the so-called illiterates who were doing the Sciences and Mathematics, those doing English were considered above it! We also were expected to do O level General Studies, again because the Science side were considered too narrow, as a year group we pestered the Head to allow us to do the A level paper, which we did. Guess what, the Science side walked it, the others didn't.

[Jackdaw33]

We all had to do it, zebo. I was doing Latin, Greek and Ancient History but still had to sit it.

[Buenchico]

^^^ With regard to the above references to the opposite gender, the head teacher of the girls' grammar school next door ruled that any of her pupils seen walking home with one of our pupils while actually holding hands (shock! horror!) would be instantly expelled. We were told that, although our head teacher didn't actually agree with the ruling, the two schools ought to have similar rules and therefore the same sanction would also be applied against the male pupil.

When, in the sixth form, we wanted to organise a disco (in our own time, on a Saturday morning, at our own expense) we were told that it was acceptable to invite girls from the (independent) High School but not from 'next door', as that would outrage their headmistress!

[zebo]

My abiding memory of the GS A level paper is coming out of the Hall and one of the 'How brilliant am I' brigade cursing, How the f@@k do you work out a spiral staircase! Strange what you keep for 50 years! Our Head was a bit sniffy about football, but then an old boy played in the '66 World Cup final and he eased up a bit.

[Smowball]

So sorry guys - Was watching a film! I just really feel for the lad as his mum shares her whole lifeo. This site and he is such a quiet boy - am sure he is mortified.

[Smowball]

Whoops what happened there?

[Buenchico]

Divebuddy:
It wasn't until many years after I left school that I started to wonder about the strict 'hygiene' rules applied by our PE teachers. i.e, the wearing of any form of underwear for PE or Games was strictly prohibited and we were all encouraged to take lengthy (and closely supervised) showers.

Hmmm . . .

;-)

[Jackdaw33]

I was a bloody sight more scared of the prefects than I ever was of the teachers.