Three cheers for Manchester Grammar School. Margaret Thatcher, Destroyer of the Grammar Schools (it is thanks to her that somewhere called Manchester Grammar School is no longer in the state sector), went on to ruin my life by replacing O-levels with GCSEs.
Even A-levels and who knows what else have gone on to be more and more modelled on these totally non-academic qualifications, which mark people down if their answers are “too sophisticated”.
That I know anything much at all is because of teachers – old grammar school, and I should add often very left-wing economically – who decided to fill up the vast amount of lesson time left over after covering that day’s GCSE material by actually teaching us anything.
But I know that I shall be struggling to fill in the gaps for the rest of my life.
The IGCSE is good, and it says a great deal that its strength is deemed suitable for export only (including to Saint Helena, where they take great pride in their “British” examinations that they do not know are banned from most schools over here). Michael Gove’s scheme to let state schools use it has two problems: he isn’t really going to do it; and even if he did, it would in practice apply only to the Lenin High Schools.
Bring back O-levels.
Denounce Thatcher, and bring back both O-levels and grammar schools.
As, of course, the Thatcher-worshipping Tories cannot do.
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