What I’m really thinking: the GCSE student

I press my Oyster card against the machine, and the kindly bus driver asks how my day was. I mumble something about it being fine. It’s not an unfair description of another mind-numbing day, filled with my teachers giving lessons they didn’t want to teach to students who didn’t want to learn.

I’m at a London comprehensive, and it’s filled with good people in a bad system. Students want to learn and teachers want to teach. But a regimented curriculum geared towards preparing students for impersonal, memory-based exams is as depressing as it is uninteresting.

When I was 10, in year five, my teacher was eccentric and inspirational. He showed complete disregard for what he was meant to teach and how he was meant to teach it – he was the best teacher I’ve had. Year five wasn’t just the year I enjoyed the most, but also the year I learned the most (according to standardised tests). His students thought he was fantastic – the school had him sacked.

I get home and slump on the nearest sofa. The effort required to make it through a school day and to complete my homework and revision is immense. Combine it with trying to lead something vaguely resembling a social life while making it through puberty, and you rapidly become exhausted. There are only two kinds of GCSE students: tired ones and liars.

I read education-related news articles. They often seem to be about exam reform. Conspicuously absent are the opinions of actual students. I’m not saying I have all the answers, just that occasionally it could help to listen to a teenager.