I still feel uneasy at exam results time. My Highers certificate did not make good reading, because where many of my classmates could proudly look down a list of As I was instead staring at a little column of asterisks.
OK so there was an A for English (a pleasant surprise) and a B for History (unpleasant because it was my favourite subject, and I’ll never understand how Stewart King got an A when he wrote an essay on Charles XII of Sweden who we hadn’t studied…), but as I slowly pulled my Higher results out the envelope all that followed were the dreaded compensatory O Grades the asterisks denoted. Chemistry: fail, French: fail, Maths: fail. Oh s***, as the certificate suggested.
Then again, to put it mildly I was never the most diligent pupil. I blame Mitchell’s Milk, or rather enjoying the money I earned running round Croftfoot for two hours delivering milk and rolls every morning before school. A fiver wages plus a fiver in tips from the Friday night bill run meant I had more of my own loot than most of my contemporaries, the majority of which was spent at Listen Records.
The downside was I was knackered, and with PE or rugby most days in hindsight I might have had what would now be diagnosed as attention deficit disorder. Or maybe it was nothing to do with the milk and I just had ADHD all along? Perhaps more plausibly I was just thick and lazy. Anyway, the treatment was often the belt for admittedly pretty poor behaviour. Sorry teachers, it wasn’t really your fault.
This was 1979 and there was little chat in our house about SQA hotlines, appeals or any of the present-day apparatus for urgent action to rescue students in bother, and so instead of the English course at Glasgow University I fancied it was the Hutchesons’ Remedial Sixth Form College for me, also known as Langside College.
Perhaps that’s being unfair on Hutchie, although there was about a class-full of people whose parents might have regarded Beaton Road as a waste of money, because other private schools were well represented too. There was a particularly strong contingent from St Aloysius, the head boy from Keil School who went on to join the Met became a pal, but less so a chap from Glasgow Academy who only a year previously had taken great delight in kicking my head at the bottom of a ruck.
Another of my new chums, with whom I used to enjoy a now punishment-free smoke at break-time, regaled us with dreadful tales about the nocturnal activities of monks at his school, Fort Augustus, which we didn’t quite believe. Except we now know every bit of it was true.
Apart from sharing the common bond of failure, the other reason most of us were there was because there was little by way of a Sixth Form culture. At Hutchesons’, eight forms in fifth year was down to one in the Sixth, made up of people either re-sitting or aiming for Oxbridge entry and one or two who I guess just couldn’t let go. For most people school finished at the end of Fifth Year.
So why didn’t people go back? Not having to wear uniform was an obvious incentive, freedom to smoke was high on my list of priorities, but there was also the limitation of the curriculum. There were far fewer subjects (Higher PE anyone?) and no-one really understood Sixth Year Studies because universities didn’t recognise them.
Contrast this with academic schools today where the drop-off from Fifth Form is negligible, uniform doesn’t present a problem and the Sixth Forms are bulging with 18-year-olds taking Advanced Highers or Baccalaureates.
But what has not changed is the basic Scottish four-year undergraduate degree programme, a system which evolved alongside an assumption that most students would start their courses after Fifth Year with four or five Highers under their belts.
It is still a common observation amongst many English students at Scottish universities, who are paying for the privilege of subsidising the locals, that much of their first year is spent going over old ground, so if students with vocational HNCs can progress to degree courses in the second year so why not look at a similar system for those with academic Advanced Highers and A levels?
With growing pressure on higher education budgets and student debt is as much an issue here as it is in England, it’s surely time for universities to do more to recognise the new landscape in the courses they offer.
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