A-level students have lost a rite of passage due to the coronavirus crisis — give them a moment of self-pity
REMEMBER that moment when you finished your final exam and walked out of the gymnasium door in to a glorious few weeks of freedom and celebration?
Those born in 1960 lucked out with the Summer of ’76, with its sweltering hot days and signature whiff of melting tarmac, while the rest of us made do with the usual unpredictable British weather.
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But we didn’t care. We were high on euphoria and expectation before the inevitable responsibilities and occasional disappointments of adult life set in.
For me, it meant a week in Tywyn, Wales, in the caravan of my friend Mandy’s mum and dad, followed by a summer job in Littlewoods and Sundays spent hanging around the local rec with my mates while passing round a warm, spittle-filled bottle of budget cider.
Ah, those were the days. Today’s kids are more likely to be drinking canned Pinot Grigio at an American-style prom party before heading off on a family holiday to Spain, but the sense of closure they feel at the end of exams is exactly the same. It’s a rite of passage.
So for all those GCSE and A-level students for whom Covid-19 has put paid to that “end of exams” feeling, I have nothing but the utmost sympathy.
Fraught with pitfalls
Last Wednesday I was on a dog walk with my youngest (her school had already closed two days earlier because of a cluster of suspected Covid-19 cases) when news came in that her GCSEs were off.
It’s tempting to think that she and the rest of Class 2020 might have whooped with joy at this unprecedented cancellation of national exams, but that would be to sorely underestimate the level of pressure placed on their generation to get a qualification that will elevate them out of the in-tray of life and into paid employment.
Like the Olympic athletes who’ve spent the past few years training for that one event in Tokyo that has been postponed until next year, our kids have been preparing for exams that their parents and teachers have drummed into them are so critically important to their future.
So forgive them if, despite the deaths that give perspective to the little things that many of us find frustrating about this plague on all our houses, they allow themselves a spell of feeling deeply sorry for themselves.
They will now be given “predicted” grades — though the Government is still frustratingly vague on the exact detail of how they will be decided upon.
There has been some suggestion that mock results might be a factor but, let’s face it, they’re rarely taken seriously at the time and never match the grades kids get in the real thing. So let’s hope they come up with something fairer.
Either way, it’s going to be potentially fraught with pitfalls.
“I wanted to earn my grades,” the youngest said, plaintively, the other day. “Now I feel like all my hard work has been for nothing.”
I reassured her that, one day, knowledge such as “changes to Tanzania’s economy through private and foreign investment” (Geography), “the formation of polyesters through the reaction between dicarboxylic acid monomers and diol monomers” (chemistry) and “parallel and collinear vectors” (maths) might come in handy when, ten years from now, she’s at a pub quiz. Or maybe not.
Life skills
Which brings me to my final point on this unprecedented cancellation of GCSEs and A-levels.
The latter are fine as they are, but perhaps those in the upper echelons of education could use this time of isolation to take a long, hard look at GCSEs and whether they are fit for purpose in the modern world?
Most kids know their subject strengths and weaknesses by the time they’re 14 so, aside from basic maths and English, which prove useful whatever your chosen employment, do they really need their heads crammed with often obscure information that, if needed in later life, they could simply look up on Google?
Better, surely, to teach them vital life skills such as entrepreneurialism, money management, how to compose an impressive CV and do well in job interviews?
NHS heroes
THE campaign #clapforourcarers is encouraging everyone to join in with a mass round of applause at exactly 8pm tomorrow night.
Like a reverse version of a minute’s silence, it’s to show our hard-working NHS staff how much we appreciate their efforts at this deeply challenging time.
So whether you do it in a garden/balcony/windowbox or post it live on social media, put your hands together and show that we care about them too.
Madge's view a bit rich
MADONNA has posted an, er, inspirational Instagram video of herself pontificating on the Covid-19 plague while luxuriating in a bath full of rose petals.
As you do.
Her Madgeness declares: “That’s the thing about Covid-19. It doesn’t care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell.
“It’s the great equaliser and what’s terrible about it is what’s great about it.”
Hmmmm. Nice sentiment, but the reality of self-isolation for the majority brings to mind the famous quote from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Be it the Queen Of Pop, with her vast mansion and multi-million dollar nest egg to see her through these trying times, or The Queen with her “skeleton staff of eight” – being in lockdown is far nicer when you’re wealthy.
But when there’s loads of you in a pokey space and with no discernible means of paying next month’s rent, it’s not so “great”.
Hairy time in history
GOVERNMENT advice on who should be doing what and when is still a little woolly.
And where there’s potential loopholes there are those who will either misunderstand or willfully exploit them.
Step forward Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley who, post-lockdown, told his staff they should turn up for work before being publicly shamed in to telling them to stay home after all.
But with cycle shops being allowed to stay open, he could perhaps mitigate that as he’s in the business of sports equipment, he thought the same rule applied to his business too.
Similarly, while the building work on one house near me has ceased, another is still ongoing with at least eight construction workers – all of whom will have either shared a van or taken public transport to get there.
So one suspects the Government is going to have to ramp up the “lockdown” rhetoric to make it clearer exactly what is deemed essential and what’s not.
Meanwhile, I’m going to exploit this small pocket of vagueness by hopping on my bike and heading to the local pharmacy for a packet of hair dye, not least because it comes with a handy pair of disposable gloves.
As the Donald Trump meme shows above, no one wants to see that much harsh reality.
McMadness
THE closure of McDonald’s prompted 100s of people to queue round the block for one last Big Mac.
They shouldn’t worry.
Given that a man in Utah claims to own the world’s oldest McDonald’s burger (it will reportedly be 22 years old on July 7 this year) and it shows no sign of decay.
All those desperate McAddicts could have bought 100 of them and they’d still be edible at Christmas.