NADINE DORRIES: Worried about A-level grades? My daughter’s results were so catastrophic I crashed the car
A level results are due this Thursday, and we’ve been warned. Covid is over and so is the practice of greater leniency in marking of papers from which pupils benefited because of the interruptions to their education caused by the pandemic and lockdowns.
This year, grades will be in keeping with pre-pandemic norms. And UCAS — the Universities and Colleges Admission Service — is warning that 100,000 fewer A* and As will be awarded as a result.
So far, so grim for the thousands of pupils who await judgment on their two years of hard graft.
I have lived through the drama of this event with all three of my daughters and have the scars to prove it. And — one time — so did my car.
When the results for my youngest came through, my eldest daughter and I drove her to school.
I have lived through the drama of this event with all three of my daughters and have the scars to prove it. And — one time — so did my car
My youngest then told us her grades — which were so unexpectedly, catastrophically bad that I mounted the flower bed, carried on through the roses and crashed into a yew hedge (Stock Photo)
Upon being told we were not allowed to go in with her, we sat patiently in the car park and waited for what felt like for ever until she finally emerged, clutching her results envelope.
She slipped silently on to the back seat of the car, slammed the door and said: ‘Just drive.’
My heart sank. This was not the script as I’d come to know it. There had been tense moments along the way with the elder two — including the time one of them had discovered she’d been studying the wrong Shakespeare text, Othello, instead of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Cramming two years’ work into six months, she still managed to get a decent result in the exam, and I’d been lulled into a false state of believing that nothing could ever be as bad as that.
But back to the youngest: she said she would reveal her results only when we were home, and a stony silence persisted on the drive back. I willed every traffic light to be green and every zebra crossing to be empty so that we’d get there faster.
As I turned into the gate, my eldest daughter said: ‘We’re home now, so…?’
And my youngest then told us her grades — which were so unexpectedly, catastrophically bad that I mounted the flower bed, carried on through the roses and crashed into a yew hedge.
What followed — once the tears and recriminations had subsided, and after I had got on the phone to her father and the local garage — was managed by my eldest.
She went straight to her computer and got into Ucas clearing online, eventually securing her sister a university place to study law.
It wasn’t the institution my daughter had wanted but, as her sister reminded me as she handed me a chamomile tea (because, frankly, I was all over the place by this point), the law is the law.
She was right and, three years later, my youngest left the university she’d never have picked in a million years, with a First.
Luckily, on the day she gave me that unexpected news, I wasn’t driving the car.
Given how tough it is expected to be this year, my advice for parents and students is this: if the results aren’t what you expect but you’re still absolutely determined to go to university, get into clearing as fast as you can.
If grades overall are going to be lower than anticipated, many will be in the same boat and the number of places is limited.
To save time and be better placed to access the Ucas website, get your results online rather than turning up at school. And if that fails, remember that, yes, you can try again next year, but university isn’t the answer for everyone.
Indeed, you may well be dodging a financial bullet — tuition fees, loans and accommodation costs — by not going.
Do consider other learning and employment opportunities, and take heart from the fact that many successful people flunked exams or didn’t go to university but went on to have stellar careers. Geri Horner, my favourite Spice Girl, decided not to go to university, while Richard Branson, our most high-profile entrepreneur, left school with no qualifications at all.
The rest of your life isn’t dictated by one event at 17 or 18, as Jeremy Clarkson reminds us every year when he cites his own poor A-level grades — usually from a yacht in the South of France, or as his chef serves him truffles for breakfast.
No children of divorce should have to leave the family home
Kevin Costner and his estranged wife, Christine Baumgartner, are locked in a bitter divorce battle.
In a bizarre technical wrangle, a hearing in November will decide whether or not Christine understood the meaning of ‘understood’ in the pre-nuptial agreement she signed when she married the Hollywood star (who is worth around £315 million).
Kevin Costner and his estranged wife, Christine Baumgartner (pictured together in 2015), are locked in a bitter divorce battle
While their lawyers do battle, Christine has moved out of the £115 million Californian estate where she and their children have always lived — following a court order — to a nearby rental property to keep things as ‘normal as possible’ as the teenagers prepare to return to school.
As adults, we can move on from the emotional pain of divorce but, sadly, it’s not always so for children.
I can’t think of a more destabilising event for a child already having to come to terms with the break-up of the family unit than to have to move out of the place they call home. Have a word with yourself, Kevin!
Why is it the rich so often can’t afford to be caring?
Remember the days when the conversation about the very wealthy might include a mention of their philanthropic endeavours?
Now the narrative seems to have changed, and it disturbs me: the multi-millionaires and billionaires who walk among us seem otherwise engaged in more self-indulgent ventures.
It’s barely two months since the implosion of the Titan submersible on its journey to Titanic’s graveyard, 12,500ft beneath the Atlantic.
Five people died — two of them billionaires who had paid £195,000 each for the privilege of being among the few humans on the planet to have made that journey.
Last month, on the world’s second highest mountain, K2 — said to be more treacherous than Everest — a Pakistani porter called Mohammed Hassan reportedly lay dying as climbers, many of whom had paid tens of thousands of pounds to make the ascent, carefully stepped over him as they headed for the top.
And for me there is something quite sickening about the on-again/off-again Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg cage fight. Are we really meant to take it, or them, seriously?
It was claimed this week that Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, once told an acquaintance who had commented that he looked a little sad: ‘As long as I’m not the richest man in the world, I won’t really be happy.’
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and the man who held the ‘world’s wealthiest’ title for many years, may not be perfect, but few can doubt his efforts in funding vaccine research and public health initiatives globally.
So, yes, give me a multi-millionaire/billionaire who spends more time thinking about how to save the world and its vulnerable people than how to conquer it — or a business rival — any day.
Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has branded the House of Commons an unsuitable environment for a cat, due to the infestation of rats. Not only are the rats there plentiful, they are audacious and creepy. But, with no cats around, at least the snakes won’t go hungry.
Today’s literary gem
‘If a rich man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it’ – Socrates
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