Education logo

Failing My A-Levels

Education as an Experiment

By R KPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
Like

From the perspective of a 17-year-old student

I always thought I was a smart girl. Maybe not the brightest, but smart to an extent. I was always put in higher sets for subjects and got good grades throughout my academic life. But once I failed my A-Levels, I have felt stupid and honestly quite thick.

But what made me think I was smart in the first place? Grades are a major part. Due to how I was marked on my work and what grade came out of it, I would make a judgement on myself about whether I was good at it or not. This judgement affected how I performed in the classroom. I assumed I was good at the subject if I constantly got good grades in it. But who determines whether one piece of work is better than the other? I now think about those who get lower grades and how it must demotivate them, giving that self-fulfilling prophecy on a path to failure.

Now I cannot fully blame the education system, although I do believe they have a strong part to play to our self-image of intelligence. We need to put in the work ourselves, strive to get the highest that we can be. But, how can we?

It was the first year that the education system decided to change and put all our exams at the end of our two years of studying, with more challenging content. Why? My idea is that too many people were getting into university and not enough people were going for below-graduate jobs. But in a society that encourages that university is the only way to succeed in life, it is pretty discouraging to find that you are not going to be able to even get there.

We were put as an experiment to see if this new regime would be successful. And at what cost? I had a set plan for my career since I was 14 and now I must choose a new career path as the exams were ‘too hard’ for me. I will let you know now, I tried extremely hard to pass them, I learnt a lot. A lot of the content did not come up in the exam and new exams were introduced. And now, all that knowledge will never be needed by me ever again.

“Every time we get close to winning, they always move the finishing line.” – Hidden Figures

This new regime, in my opinion, set us up to fail. And I, for one, am tired of the hold this education system has on us. Education is our whole life, and now it’s turning into some game. Treating us like lab rats, seeing who will pass and fail - with us having to face the outcome.

Those currently in university will never have to ensure the difficulty of the A Levels taken at the same time. But, the older generation will always think that A Level are not that hard, ignoring the stress and anxiety students go through, knowing that the outcome of these exams have an impact on their future. More commonly then people want to say, but school provides very little support on exam stress.

School: "Revise calmly. Try to have breaks between your revision sessions. Keep seeing your friends and get support from each other. With enough revision and constant note-taking, you will get good grades and get into university."

Student: "But how can have breaks with so much content in each exam?"

School: "..."

Student: "How can I support my friends if we're all as stressed as each other?"

School: "..."

Student: "How can we revise consistently for all my exams if they're all so close together?"

School: "..."

The school will claim your good grades as their success, but will discard your bad grades as your own problems.

courses
Like

About the Creator

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.