Anorak
19 Aug 2005
CONGRATULATIONS to the Times on finding one of the three per cent of A-level students not to pass their exams.
More blonde girls pass than ever before
While the Telegraph sticks with the traditional picture of a couple of blondish girls throwing their heads back as if in a hair care commercial and facing up to rosy futures with white teeth and excited eyes, the Times shows a chubby girl in a state of resignation.
Her name is Karin Sime, and she is the “ONE OFF: the girl who failed hr A levels.”
Rightly, Karin is held up to the world at large as a freak. Hers is a brain to be studied. And on the Times’s page seven, we read that Karin, 18, who had dream of becoming a vet, scored two U grades in her biology and environmental science AS-levels.
Poor old Karin. She says she’ll probably take a year out and then retake her exams. But the Times is unsure of this plan, and it asks: “Can you help Karin?” It invites readers to email in their suggestions and tips for this noteworthy failure.
Our suggestion is that Karin is placed in a cage at the Science Museum, her life forming part of a module in some GCSE project. Or else thrown into a pond.
But before the winning suggestion is announced, there are yet more pressing things on the education agenda.
The front-page of the Times is not all about young Karin, but leads with the headline: “Universities to close the door on 60,000.”
So many students have done so very well in their big tests that a record number of them have already claimed places at their chosen universities.
Good news for them. And made all the more enjoyable when the winners learn that there are 100,000 wannabe graduates now chasing just 37,000 vacancies in the scramble to avoid getting a job that’s known as clearing.
This means that students who want to study will have to try and get in wherever they can. They will spend part of the summer holidays chasing a place on some minor college’s least popular courses.
But there is only enough room at the University of Teeside’s undergraduate programme in Sociology & Youth Studies, and 60,000 students will not get in anywhere.
Unless they chose to enter the University of Life, or McDonald’s, as it’s popularly known...
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*) for starters. I do find it amazing that when teachers complain about so much extra paper work, longer hours, less discipline in the class, and little money for books and materials that the exam results keep improving year on year when teachers talk about crises in the classrooms. University lecturers moan about lack of even the most basic of skills, and industry chiefs moan that graduates aren't good enough for traditional graduate positions. tbh, I haven't noticed much difference here though - most of the graduates we get seem pretty clued up. so they must be doing something right at uni at least.
This country's qualifications mad. I just don't know how we survived in the old day's without a qualification in lighting fires, hunting and chopping trees down 