I'm reminded of the pupil (or, rather, ex-pupil as he was by then) whom I met walking out of the school building, clutching his exam results, on 'results day'. He was an 'educationally challenged' student. (In fact he was as 'educationally challenged' as two short planks!). He was also not noted for his school attendance. So I was surprised when he called me over, saying "See, I told you I could do maths. I'm not thick! I've got an 'A'!)
I looked at his exam results slip, which was for the old CSE examination. Sure enough, there against 'Mathematics' was the letter 'A'. I then reminded him of two things which he rather seemed to have overlooked:
Firstly, CSE grades were numbers (from 1 to 6), not letters.
Secondly, he'd failed to turn up for either of his maths exams.
The 'A' on his results sheet stood for 'Absent'!
I've often wondered whether, if I had not happened to bump into him leaving the school on that day, he would have spent the rest of life believing that he'd excelled at maths ;-)
Chris