St Michael’s Catholic Grammar School, against all odds, both local and global, have resisted the movement of the masses this year and continued to shine out as a beacon of individuality and excelling superiority. The same institution who pride themselves on student wellbeing whilst simultaneously ignoring the student perspective on what wellbeing is, have reached the decision to continue with internal exams for year 12. Within this essay, I will be interrogating this judgement, and arguing that in any regard it is simply not logical.
Firstly, let’s examine the manner in which St Michael’s made this holy proclamation. What immediately strikes me as odd, is that only my mother received an email about my exams. When I have two functioning school emails, surely you weren’t struggling to contact me?
No, you didn’t try. You didn’t think to contact me, first and foremost, directly, about my own exams. I can think of no good reason at all for the student body to not be contacted directly about their own academic business, when the means have never been easier and more necessary, and no good reason at all for why we were instead left to scramble for the crumb-caked clues left to fall from the adults table, passed around from story to story like a ravenous game of Chinese whispers.
Furthermore, the timing of this email also reeks of incompetency to me. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the mass closure of schools in England on Wednesday 18th March, and schools shut promptly, two days later. The coming year 12 exams, which now belonged to a distant universe, were due to start Monday 4th May. Obviously this could no longer take place, and to confirm this sentiment, on the 6th April, Mr Stimpson helpfully emailed my mother to tell her to tell me that I can relax over what we were apparently still pretending was the Easter holiday: “both teachers and students need a break” and I should be “moving away from school work to other worthwhile activities”.
Although verbatim he did not say exams were cancelled, granted, but I was going off the convenient neglection of any information on year 12 exams, and the national information being that all major exams were cancelled, and the local opinion of every other sixth form and college in the area not going ahead with year 12 exams, and the common sense that in a global crisis there are bigger things to worry about, and the trust and respect in our teachers that this decision reached was a common, unremarkable one: so do excuse the quantum mental leap I took in assuming exams would not be on.
So would you imagine my surprise, when on the fateful, dreary morn on the 4th of May, when the Easter sun had long set and the spirit of Jesus descended higher than he could help us now, it seemed in fact we would be doing exams. If the school had always intended on setting end of year exams for year 12, why were we not made aware of this from the very beginning? Even if they weren’t certain, in dangerous times such as these it’s best to err on the side of caution, to let us know that the work we’re still getting set might soon be tested, instead of saying effectively the exact opposite.
Or if St Michael’s didn’t know they’d end up setting exams for year 12, to then suddenly set upon us with two weeks of testing can quite easily be interpreted as ill-considered.
To an unforgiving eye, it might appear that St Michael’s was purposefully intent on disadvantaging their students. But as a man on the inside, the informant can assure you that St Michaels’ values nothing more on God’s green earth than the holy grail of academic achievement.
O the horrid dramatic irony! That St Michael’s should turn a quest to make life at school more mentally bearable for their students, to give them basic emotional support and meet their psychological needs as best as they can, into a Wellbeing Award. To transform a matter of essential health and happiness into an achievement, a prize to win: so that it’ll finally be worth working towards. For if they only knew what we knew, that the crippling, compulsive obsession with academia and success, no matter the means to the end, might just be the plague that doth cause the sickness. O, the poetic justice of it all.
But let not our laments carry us away from the work at hand. Let us return to the glittering gold mine that is the email of 4th May. Why, opening such a message is surely the closest modern equivalent to watching medieval knights from afar, as they unfurled His Majesty the King’s royal scroll to announce your execution to take place the eighth day of the summer month of June. One passage the king’s advisors might have meekly suggested he omit, would be the quite expansive paragraph completely dedicated to the Evil and Daemonologie of the 18th Birthday Party.
For St Michael’s to claim they value mental health to the highest heavens, but then to explicitly decree that fun should not be had if it were to interfere with school work, and that your grades are more important than the day you were born, seems, to put it lightly, contradictory.
It feels unbecomingly presumptuous for St Michael’s to dictate what I can and cannot do in my free time, when they cannot even decide what I’m doing during school time: as of yet, 3 weeks until my tests, I don’t know any details or how or when they will be conducted, nor do I have the proper resources (through no fault of my teachers) to properly teach myself my own A levels. which seems as if it has much more relevance and repercussion on my education than the fantasy of a mass gathering for an 18th birthday party which, at the time of my writing, is borderline illegal.
It looks as if, on the whole, St Michael’s generally has a problem with seeing the bigger picture. In the event of a global, catastrophic pandemic, it focuses on the much grander occasion of exams. In the event of exams, it focuses on the monumental threat of a couple of beers and a cake with eighteen candles in it. And it’s becoming steadily, dreadfully true that the mantra “We keep an eye on you.” used to convince us to stay here for sixth form, meant nothing at all except “We will still control you.”
Of course, there’s a strong argument in favour of having these exams. These mock exams conventionally form the basis of our predicted grades for UCAS applications, which constitute our next move into higher education. It’s imperative that these exams take place each year in order for this predictive process to be accurate. Unfortunately, this compelling logic simply doesn’t apply to the situation we find ourselves in today. Firstly, many sixth forms across the country are not holding Year 12 exams this year. If other schools have decided to cast off these exams, in favour of the mental health of their students, and with intention of following the UCAS guidance on predicted grades to be published in June, this shows exams now are not a necessity, but a conscious choice, and perhaps an unconscious demonstration of priorities.
Secondly, the manner in which these exams will be conducted will undoubtedly be in such a way that they will not be an accurate representation of how one would perform in conventional testing. I can't think of a single environment more distinct and fundamentally unlike the silent school hall, surrounded by your studious, furrow-browed classmates and stared down upon by the omniscient, projected digital clock - than your home: teeming with people and animals who have nowhere else to be except here, you being solitary, but not alone, in your studying, as the knowing glint and wink of the light of your phone, the tempting, deep, dark depth of the internet, the vastest sea on earth, waits, patiently, just a fingertip away. No, I can’t think of two environments quite so dissimilar. So to use the product of one environment as the prediction for the other is not in the least bit scientific.
When they’ll clearly have absolutely negligible generalisability to grades I’d attain in real exams, or even grades I might attain in realistic mock exams, what exactly is their purpose?
As my rambles near to an end, there is still one invincible, age-old counterpoint left to consider, its sheer power enough to decimate my pages of consultation and argument.
“I’m the school, you’re the student. You do what I say, and that’s final.”
Okay. If this is the final excuse, then that’s fine. I’ll admit it’s a strong argument, one that’s served you well over all the years of my life I’ve been in education.
So just say it. Don’t insult my intelligence. Don’t pretend this is for us, rather than for you, rather than your reputation as an academically flawless institution. Don’t forget that as you boast our academic achievement as a product of your divine creation, that behind every A*, every 9, every 100% is the mind of an intelligent young woman. So don’t boast my intellect when it suits you, and condemn it when it challenges you.
If we’re expected to act like adults, we can’t be treated as children. The most valuable lesson you could teach us before we witness first-hand what the ‘real world’ is like would be to make sure that we’re always being treated with respect. So respect my health, respect my opinions, respect my life, and then my education: for my own sake, not yours.
It feels unbecomingly presumptuous for St Michael’s to dictate what I can and cannot do in my free time, when they cannot even decide what I’m doing during school time: as of yet, 3 weeks until my tests, I don’t know any details or how or when they will be conducted, nor do I have the proper resources (through no fault of my teachers) to properly teach myself my own A levels. which seems as if it has much more relevance and repercussion on my education than the fantasy of a mass gathering for an 18th birthday party which, at the time of my writing, is borderline illegal.
It looks as if, on the whole, St Michael’s generally has a problem with seeing the bigger picture. In the event of a global, catastrophic pandemic, it focuses on the much grander occasion of exams. In the event of exams, it focuses on the monumental threat of a couple of beers and a cake with eighteen candles in it. And it’s becoming steadily, dreadfully true that the mantra “We keep an eye on you.” used to convince us to stay here for sixth form, meant nothing at all except “We will still control you.”
Of course, there’s a strong argument in favour of having these exams. These mock exams conventionally form the basis of our predicted grades for UCAS applications, which constitute our next move into higher education. It’s imperative that these exams take place each year in order for this predictive process to be accurate. Unfortunately, this compelling logic simply doesn’t apply to the situation we find ourselves in today. Firstly, many sixth forms across the country are not holding Year 12 exams this year. If other schools have decided to cast off these exams, in favour of the mental health of their students, and with intention of following the UCAS guidance on predicted grades to be published in June, this shows exams now are not a necessity, but a conscious choice, and perhaps an unconscious demonstration of priorities.
Secondly, the manner in which these exams will be conducted will undoubtedly be in such a way that they will not be an accurate representation of how one would perform in conventional testing. I can't think of a single environment more distinct and fundamentally unlike the silent school hall, surrounded by your studious, furrow-browed classmates and stared down upon by the omniscient, projected digital clock - than your home: teeming with people and animals who have nowhere else to be except here, you being solitary, but not alone, in your studying, as the knowing glint and wink of the light of your phone, the tempting, deep, dark depth of the internet, the vastest sea on earth, waits, patiently, just a fingertip away. No, I can’t think of two environments quite so dissimilar. So to use the product of one environment as the prediction for the other is not in the least bit scientific.
When they’ll clearly have absolutely negligible generalisability to grades I’d attain in real exams, or even grades I might attain in realistic mock exams, what exactly is their purpose?
As my rambles near to an end, there is still one invincible, age-old counterpoint left to consider, its sheer power enough to decimate my pages of consultation and argument.
“I’m the school, you’re the student. You do what I say, and that’s final.”
Okay. If this is the final excuse, then that’s fine. I’ll admit it’s a strong argument, one that’s served you well over all the years of my life I’ve been in education.
So just say it. Don’t insult my intelligence. Don’t pretend this is for us, rather than for you, rather than your reputation as an academically flawless institution. Don’t forget that as you boast our academic achievement as a product of your divine creation, that behind every A*, every 9, every 100% is the mind of an intelligent young woman. So don’t boast my intellect when it suits you, and condemn it when it challenges you.
If we’re expected to act like adults, we can’t be treated as children. The most valuable lesson you could teach us before we witness first-hand what the ‘real world’ is like would be to make sure that we’re always being treated with respect. So respect my health, respect my opinions, respect my life, and then my education: for my own sake, not yours.
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