Grade

We are in the middle of the examination season. Hopeful young adults, my daughter among them, are sitting their GCSEs. Day by day, week by week, a relentless succession of papers. The stress is palpable.

I struggle to remember much about my O levels. It was all so long ago, and I suspect the mind has a knack of repressing such painful memories. We seemed so less well prepared in those days: we were taught stuff during lessons, we went away and learnt it, and then regurgitated as much as we could under examination conditions. But now youngsters are coached on exam technique, practise on endless past papers, have private tutors if they can afford them, re-take modules till they get them right, and even have teachers who actually murmur encouraging comments rather than ignore them entirely, or, at best, lob pieces of chalk at them across the classroom. And they probably don't even have chalk any more.

Perhaps this is just a consequence of my advancing years, a stubborn refusal to believe that any generation could possibly have had a harsher upbringing than mine. Perhaps I envy today's young adults the information they have at their fingertips, accessed in a moment on the internet, and the resources and support network available to them. Or perhaps I still haven't come to terms with the C grade I received in History.