The people who sail through tests can suffer in later life. Isn’t it time exam results rewarded effort as well as attainment?
“I’ll give you two separate marks for your work,” said many schoolteachers to all of us at some stage. “The first one will be for effort and the second will be for attainment; the one for how hard you work is more important than the one for how good the work is.” At this we would all think: ‘Yeah whatever’, or whichever phrase conveyed the requisite cynicism when we were at school. I was nearly 50 before it dawned on me what truth those teachers spoke.
Related: ‘Students have worked very hard’: headteacher rejects grade inflation fears
