I was given much food for thought last weekend as I listened to friends of ours field phone calls and messages regarding their youngest son who is now at university. Both parents had become personally involved in 'dialogue' with the university regarding an absence the son had taken due to illness. They were fully hands on, arranging that the hospital doctors send letters to the appropriate people in order to ensure their son did not miss out on one of the exams he had missed.
I began to wonder if my husband and I had failed our daughter who at A level results stage nearly 2 years ago, had experienced a blow that would have had my friends writing to the local, if not national newspapers in order to get justice for their son.
I can see it now - 'Maggots cause A level fails in local school.'
I didn't respond in the above way for all sorts of reasons but as time has passed I sincerely regret that decision and wish I had stood up for my daughter by at least contacting the school. It was all because they had used live MAGGOTS in the practical part of her A level Human Biology exam!
I was never a pushy parent. Not the sort that likes to join the PTA, smooze with the head teacher and generally make themselves known for personal gain.
Our daughter was great at science and it was a 'science' school. We watched her blossom academically to the point where she was predicted an A in 'A' level Human Biology. Happy Days.
The day the results came out I watched what should have been an ecstatic moment turn into a damp squib. I don't think she or I fully registered what had gone wrong. The practical part of the exam for which she had high hopes of a good grade, was a FAIL! Resulting in a C grade.
She was devastated but over the next few weeks held it together well as she was informed by the school they were going to question the examiners decisions. For a whole school to FAIL this part of the exam because they had used live MAGGOTS in their practical experiment was not acceptable.
The irony of ironies is that my daughter had HATED the maggots - they made her feel phyiscally sick. I went online to look at photo's of them to put at the head of this blog but felt horrified at the images that appeared. During her practical she'd had to put one in her mouth to warm it up! She said that they were the most pampered and well looked after maggots ever. She told me that they were fortunate maggots as they were alive by the end of it. Should they have ended up being purchased by a fisherman they would have been 'gonners'.
I sat back and let my daughter do the running. She was 18 I reasoned. I guess the school were no longer 'obliged' to write to us as parents and let us know the error that had occured. Even as I write this I realise how crazy that sounds as a justification for not making more of a fuss over what happened. Having had a relationship with the school for 10 years with constant communication, invitations to awards etc, why should the school think we were no longer interested?
My daughter tells me the school appealed and were told the decision was final, all the pupils had failed this part of the exam and there was no further way of appeal. The tragedy is that this was the last time this particular exam was being taken. There was no way my daughter could even resit!
Maybe going to the local papers would have helped?
I regret that I didn't!
Sadly this blog is too little too late.
To our daughter -
We're SO SORRY! You will always be our daughter and from now on we'll always try to stick up for you, fight with you and stand by you. We love you and are proud of you, that despite set backs and the education system letting you down at the last hurdle, we know you'll go far.
