Once upon a time we had a really wonderful education system. Way back in the nineteen fifties, kids from Council estates could, without any social engineering win scholarships to universities like Oxforrd and Cambridge purely through healthy competition. I remember kids who did it.
Since those days successive governments and a variety of educationalists have contrived to gerrymander the education of our children to such an extent that for the twenty third consecutive year the GCSE results indicate yet another improvement.
Of course we now have an 'A' star grade which superceded the 'A' grade because far too many kids were gaining the A grade. What next the 'A' double star, followed by the 'A' treble star and so in say, the year 2020, every child will achieve an 'A' grade in all subjects and we will all end up seeing stars (and counting them)!
Just how long can they perpetuate this nonsense? You see the problem is that the kids are the ones being short changed. Already it is difficult to differentiate between the brilliant and the bright and that is only half the problem. When one digs deeper we find an ignorance of basic arithmetical skills, a lack of knowledge of English grammar, poor spelling and such a dearth of what we used to call general knowledge that it is frightening.
And yet the media, the schools, parents and the authorities every year celebrate this quite glaring confidence trick. It isn't real folks! Life is just not like that. In reality during one of these twenty three years at least one academic year would not be as bright as the previous academic year. Not every child can gain an 'A' grade and if they do then the examination isn't worth sitting. I suspect that next year I will be blogging about this again because nobody appears to have the political will to change it and we are consistently sliding down the international league tables.
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