For the British students (aka: How I learned to hate the media. Again. This morning.

[el Chi]

Basically, quickly - good luck to all the British students receiving their A/S and A/2 levels today - I hope things go many kinds of excellent for you today! And all the best for the GCSE students for next week!!! Soon as I finish this, it's off to bed to recharge before helping result-laden friends get w*nkered.
Much drinking to be done!:cheers:

The media part - well actually, more the hate I have for these pompous arseholes the media seems to drag out every year having a pop at the poor students claiming that they're all free-loading bastards and that in THEIR DAY, things were much better.

Ruth Lea, of the Institute of Directors, said the "gold standard" exam no longer presented students with a real test.
She added: "Once again we must ask ourselves what do we want from A-levels, since it is clear that they are becoming increasingly meaningless.
"They used to be testing and highly discriminatory...
"They are now designed for an age of mass entrance into universitities." - taken from The Metro (crappy free newspaper), Aug 14th 2003

I want to meet Ruth Lea and set her on fire. I don't do A-levels - I did the International Baccalaureate - but most of my friends do and to have this self-important bitch be dragged from her dank hovel of an office to tell the nervous students that they are simple gobsh*tes makes my blood boil.
Exactly what gives people like this the RIGHT to say it is beyond my understanding. They even said similar things when the results system f*cked up. So - they're sh*t scared of their results and whether they're even getting the right results and now YOU have the outright audacity to tell them that they're all crap. Screw mincing words.
Go f*ck yourself.
You are talking about and undermining people's lives and confidences here. University is an acheivement but should NOT be treated as an elite club or as if the entrance system was any more of a farcical competition system than it already is. How dare this dirty b*tch reinforce that stigma!?
If more people in the UK are educated at a higher standard (ie: Uni) than they would be usually then that is a Good Thing. Unless she wants to go back to the Victorian days of proles and orphan boys cleaning chimneys. And the days when it was OK to refuse an incredibly talented and intelligent person WITH THE REQUISITE GRADES from a decent university purely because they were working class...
Shut the f*ck up demeaning these people who have WORKED and STRESSED themseleves for these results. They do NOT need sanctimonious, arrogant, traditionalist f*ckwits like her making things even more difficult.
I REFUSE to watch and have my dearest friends' acheivements belittled by dirty little pointless whores like these and even though this is perhaps the most pointless place to vent my spleen I know there are some Brit students who'll concur with me and I wish you all the luck in the world.
As for Ruth Lea? I hope something heavy falls on her and she dies.

Slowly.

 

[burnzie]

yeah, dont listen to em

if you get A or whatever you earnt it (or cheated very well :cheese

 

[dawdler]

Bah! The school system is all screwed up anyway. Why? Cause they set the learning curve by the top ranking students. Our system here in Sweden is simply moronic.
Just the simple thing that everyone wants to go to university (well kind of, there is no english word for what it is here) is not working, everyone CANT be elite all knowers with good education. It doesnt work in society (today, might work once we get robots to do all the dirty work, hehe).

 

[Sulkdodds]

Wise sentiments indeed, and understandably pissed off. I'm doing an AS course in Art, despite not even being in GCSE year yet, and I don't think we have much to worry about (I was accepted regardless of that you're meant to have an Art GCSE), not least if the only newspapers to be publishing such redundant and insultingly archaic views are crappy tabloids.

 

[Stone]

aye they're getting rid of A levs soon anywho....

but I failed all my exams today, except for one which I got a D in, I'm actually strangly proud, i've never failed anything like this b4

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

You know. I hope "for the sake of the children" (so cheesy but true) and the future of Britain they completely throw out the old system and re-think it.

 

[el Chi]

Well, I like to feel superior because I've already been through the system they're going to model the replacement on - The International Baccalaureate.
So nurr.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Well I'm a Moderator and even more superior to you...So NER!

I got a bad mark in my computing. The thing is, so did everyone else and my teacher didnt even care. Also, before we took the exams he said we were all on the way to getting at elast B's, so we though 'Oh good, that means we dont ahve to work any harder than we are now.'

Nevermind eh...

 

[el Chi]

Originally posted by Farrowlesparrow
Well I'm a Moderator and even more superior to you...So NER!

Oooh, touche!
Sorry to hear about your computing result - bummer. Hope everything else is ok though?

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Not really. I didnt do well in my Art either. But that was i admit, mainly my fault, although the grade boundaries were set a lot higher this year than they were least year.