Good luck to anyone who has kids picking up their results today.
I just hate the whole GCSE system, it makes idiots of those of us who took them in their first few years, the teachers initially never taught the syllabus correctly so just continued teaching a broad range of stuff rather than teaching us to pass the actual exam only as they seem to now.
The pass rates are quite frankly ridiculous nowdays with seemingly multiple high grades for everyone. I went to a very underperforming comprehensive school and 4 C's were a real rarety, I only know of one person in our year getting an A back in those days. My very academic friend left with just one C and six D's, he re-took at college the following year, continued in FE as far as he could go and is now lecturing law at a university with all sorts of letters after his name. Quite a few other friends from our school year have done the same after crap GCSE grades, losing a year of their lives retaking at college if they wanted their degrees.
My own results were good for my school year putting me in the top 10% but it would have cost me another year retaking GCSE's at college like my mates to go down the degree route had I wanted to. I've done well for myself through hard work, a hard apprenticeship, proving myself and continually progressing my career but I hate to put my GCSE grades on my CV as by modern standards they make me look like a complete fuckwit when any idiot can seemingly do far better nowdays. No doubt if I was taking GCSE's along with kids today I would have a rake of A's on my CV just like everyone else.
Nowdays how can employers, colleges etc distinguish who's smart and who's not when seemingly every kid has 11 GCSE's at C and above, many with a rake of A's?
Its great schools are seemingly performing on paper, continually improving and kids are getting the grades they want to move on but I can't help but feel that the system has made monkeys of my generation.