Tomorrow morning, nearly 800000 young adults will finally discover the outcome of those exams they took way back in the early summer, in the faraway time before we were smitten by heatwaves, afflicted with drought, or, God forbid, haunted by the grim spectre of Liz Truss. Following these results, universities who have courted students like the corporate enterprises they are will either fling open their exptremely expensive, gilded doors to them, or slam them shut irrevocably. Yet what a weird business it all is. Where else do you take a test and then wait ten weeks to find out how you did? Which other test is so relentlessly politicised, either too easy or not easy enough, according to a plethora of opinions offered by anyone at all, especially those whose experience is limited to having once sat an exam in 1955? And the grades themselves are so curiously meaningless; essays on Hamlet and global warming that merited an A grade in one year might only gain a B grade this time. In the modern world exam grades are merely another artificially tradeable commodity, like shares in Shell, and are distorted to fit a predetermined Department of Education distribution curve- just imagine the outcry if driving tests were marked in this way. Although the papers and websites will be full of pictures of joyous celebrations (no editor could resist all those photogenic young women), students in England know they cannot really win- whatever they achieve it won’t be enough for some. And so, my humble congratulations and warmest wishes; of course, particularly to anyone from Penwith…
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