School exams and the Scottish success rate.

School exams and the Scottish success rate.

You can still remember just how daunting it all was. It is now 41 years ago since some of us sat in this terrifying school hall wracking your head for any kind of relevant help or information which would culminate in a successful afternoon of the exam ordeal. In hindsight it all seemed very socially awkward, totally meaningless and not the academically fruitful outcome you might have been hoping for. Then again what on earth were you doing there, dredging up answers, solutions and facts about any number of weird and wonderful educational subjects?

Of course the passing of O Levels and A Levels would impact enormously on your future because you had to possess an instant recall of historical battles and wars, logarithms and algorithms in maths, grammar, vocabulary and the construction of sentences in English and rock formations in geography for reasons that still escape you. But it really seems like stuff and nonsense when looking back because even now it bore no relevance to whatever any of us wanted to do for the rest of their lives.

This is not to suggest that there are some very gifted accountants and chartered accountants, lawyers and solicitors who swotted up on their legal books both diligently and impressively and travel agents who really did their work in geography lessons. We should never forget of course the legions of air stewardesses and airline pilots who knuckled down to the task of pursuing their vocation in life with an utter dedication to duty. There were also those who followed their passion for the insurance and banking industry and came out with flying colours.

Today the school pupils or students, as perhaps we should call them, woke up this morning to the news that they had all passed their exams and were now ready to make the step up to university or college. This was always a tense, nervous and apprehensive day for all of those school pupils who would never quite know whether they were good enough to move into higher spheres of academia.

But then their fears were allayed because a vast majority of them had had nothing to worry about. It was time to fly the parental nest and come September it was off to university, an entirely new life and. quite assuredly, independence- or the first steps leading to independence. They would pack their suitcases and buy the mountain of reference books they'd need to complete the transition from childhood to adolescence. It was time to get out there into the adult world and join the rat race. Or something like that.

For those who may have been left behind in the years of struggle and striving, strain and stress, these were difficult and embarrassing times.  The ones who left school with no qualifications or very few had to be content with a life of grim industrial work or very little in the way of intellectual stimulation. This is not to say there was anything degrading about warehouse work or heavy labour but there was a world out there that we might have been missing out on.

So we buried ourselves in the local libraries, read almost constantly, tried desperately to take in the classics and anything we thought would make us feel much better about ourselves than might otherwise have been the case. We knew it wouldn't really lead to anything in life and we knew that any prospective employers wouldn't be at all impressed with anything you may have read.

It was though with great delight today though that we discovered the Scottish school pupils who had studied even harder than usual, had been rewarded with their As and Bs. For the last four months or so the young minds of Scotland had had their world turned upside down by the global coronavirus lockdown, a world that hardly seemed credible and a world that had created havoc with their study schedules.

Today those receptive school pupils opened up their envelopes, leapt up and down with joy or, in some cases, cried into sodden handkerchieves because it hadn't really been the day they were hoping for. Generally speaking, the English and literature had been easy and inevitable, the sciences were straightforward, history was in the bag and the rest of the subjects just a breeze. In other words the pass marks had been clinched, the qualifications confirmed and it was time to look at the right choice of university.

And yet you find yourself looking back to your shameful lack of any semblance of education and were reminded of the vital necessity of passing your exams. You went to a very ordinary secondary school, accepted your fate and resigned yourself to the fact that you would never amount to much when the school gates were shut on you. A severe inferiority complex began to hover over your life in later years and you could only console yourself with books even though those books would become irrelevant and inconsequential.

In retrospect you reflect on the futility of it all. It's often said that school years should be the most rewarding of your lives, that the opportunities were there and if you memorised facts, figures, dates and places the law or the medical profession was there for the taking. But even with academic attainments and certificates you're still firmly of the belief that none would really have taken me in the direction you were looking for anyway.

And so it is that the educational ministers on the government bench keep telling us that if we get all the exams we need then upward mobility is guaranteed. You'll certainly get the job in banking or insurance you were looking for. If you walk out of school with A Levels in Maths and then move onto economics then you're sure to get on in life. These are the jobs for life and you must shake their hands because their place in the Civil Service or the trading floors of the City of London are a nailed on certainty.

In a sense you think back to what might have been but never was and have no real reason to reproach yourself. Why didn't you follow in the footsteps of your contemporaries, why didn't you get on your bike and look for a job and gainful employment for the rest of your life? So what if we had nothing convincing to show to any employer since we must have known that even if we had passed a barrowload of 'O' or 'A' Levels the chances are that we'd still have found ourselves in an academic predicament.

So well done to the teenagers of Scotland who are now destined for their promised land. They know for a fact- or hope they do- that once the examinations are out of the way, qualifications laid in stone and employers ready to snap them  up with enthusiasm, then the proverbial world is their oyster. They'll pass their driving test, work themselves into the ground all hours of the day and then accumulate enough money for whatever their aim in life may be. Oh for the rarefied world of examinations and qualifications.