Exams, Awards and Shopping

It's been an ... interesting couple of weeks. Dd had her first bash at some IGCSE exams in English and English Literature. She'd wanted to study for these and, English being one of those qualifications that employers always like to see, I was quite glad for her to do them. An autonomous decision, though it does make me wonder if either of us has really deschooled as yet. Despite having quite a long drive through the rush hour to reach the exam centre, all went well on the first 3 papers. Sadly, the last paper is much more of a concern. The questions on poetry left dd with little choice but to deal with poems about imminent death and bereavement. Not ideal for her, having so recently lost her gran. Not ideal, I suspect, for a lot of teenagers (there must be a fair proportion each year who are coping with grief). We've requested special consideration (and presume others will have done likewise) but it did seem very insensitive of the exam board to set questions which left no really viable option but to analyse the most morbid poems in their anthology. Ah well, time will tell what effect it had and at least we're not worrying about our position in the GCSE league tables.

Thankfully, the day after this rotten exam paper we travelled to London for an Awards for Young Musicians workshop where the young people who'd received this year's scholarships were presented with their award certificates. Dd got to catch up with some friends she made at last year's event, had a masterclass with a lecturer from the Royal Academy of Music and, along with the other young musicians and with the facilitation of Charles Hazlewood, helped devise a collaborative, improvised piece of music which they'll be performing at the Royal Festival Hall later this month. All really exciting stuff. It was utterly inspirational to hear 9-year-olds just starting out on their musical journey alongside 17-year-olds who were ready for conservatoire; and for rock drummers, jazz saxophonists and folk fiddlers to be mixing with orchestral harpists.

A complaint among several parents at the awards event was the lack of support - even obstruction - they received from their children's schools. Some parents were on the verge of their children being disciplined because they'd taken a couple of days off from mainstream lessons in order to perform in international music festivals. Forget the prestige, they might only achieve an A rather than an A* in double science. Surely this way madness lies? It was telling that out of 50 award holders, at least 3 are home educated.

Best of all for dd, though, was the opportunity to go shopping. Especially in Camden, where the quirky, the funky, and the completely off-the-wall are the norm. This, more than anything else, was the ideal antidote to all the exam stress of the previous week.