'GCSE results matter and it’s unrealistic to tell kids otherwise'

Hello, I am Anushka and I work for Metro as an Audience Editor. As part of our GCSE results day content, we have a piece by Nadeine Asbali, a British Muslim writer and secondary school teacher living in east London who discusses the importance of good grades in today's world.

Although she agrees that life does not come to a halt with low grades, she says that by telling students that results don't matter, we could be selling an unfairly idealistic view of the world outside of school to kids who are going to be in for a rude awakening when they enter it.

'Whether it’s Jeremy Clarkson’s now (in)famous smug annual post reminding everyone he got a C and 2 Us in his A-levels or a tweet from the Chase’s Shaun Wallace revealing he failed his own exams many years ago, it is important for young people and their families to see examples that success isn’t always linear and doesn’t have to mean acing your exams on the first go,' she says.

She argues that this is because 'Britain a few decades ago was a very different place to today'.

'In an increasingly competitive job market, employers look for academic success because it’s considered the more reliable litmus test. Places at better-rated colleges, sixth forms and universities rely on exam results. The best-paid grad schemes take the highest achieving graduates. '

Instead, she says we need to turn our attention towards how we can ensure young people today, whose academic journey may be curtailed by exam results, are still able to experience success – whether that's via apprenticeships that could be working to ensure that grade requirements better acknowledge the impacts of poverty; or it might be funnelling funding into schools to ensure that every single child – not just the academically elite – has access to the best quality education.

'Whatever the answer is, we need to focus on the future, not nostalgia for the past. No matter how tempting it is to brag about overcoming bad results. '

What do you think? Are we selling students a rose-tinted version of the outside world when we tell them that results don't matter?

You can read the full piece here: https://metro.co.uk/2024/08/22/gcse-results-matter-unrealistic-tell-kids-otherwise-21467722/

Submitted August 22, 2024 at 07:10AM by Metro-UK https://ift.tt/LAv4RM9