Before boasting how brilliant your child did at GCSEs spare a thought for the failures like me and their parents
My GCSE results day brought that halcyon 1992 summer of lazy days and crazy nights to a crashing halt.
I failed my GCSEs. So many of them, in fact, that if I wanted to continue my education I would have to spend a whole year doing GCSE retakes.
A whole year. I’d only had 15 full years up to that point and now I was going to have to spend the next 12 months doing something I could have avoided if I had only bothered or tried earlier on.
I was on holiday at my auntie and uncle’s house in Wales and had to rely on my mother reading the results down the phone to me as I stood in a phone box (this was the early 90s, remember).
I don’t think I’d ever felt as alone as that moment when I realised I was a failure. Ds, Es, Fs, Us – I had them all.
The only thing I had to show for five years at Great Barr Comprehensive School were Cs in History and English Literature. And that was because I loved History and liked English.
My mother was not shocked, though. She had been predicting this outcome for years.
"You are not going to pass your exams playing football, gawping at your computer, or staring at that TV," she would say.
And she was right.
But what fun I had. Every night for years I’d finish my dinner and hang out on the Astroturf with loads of other kids, most of whom failed their GCSEs too – the ones who were entered for them, anyway.
