Comments | pwilkinson: Did YOU pass the English Baccalaureate?

pwilkinson

Did YOU pass the English Baccalaureate?

Jan 15, 2011 01:07

I have a confession to make - forty years ago this year, I failed the English Baccalaureate. Of course, the English Baccalaureate didn't exist forty years ago - but it still didn't exist last summer when, the government tells us, tens of thousands of teenagers failed it. So this petty objection can not negate my failure.
( Now for the details )

Comments 13

the_magician January 15 2011, 01:23:27 UTC

Nope. But then I have *no* GCSEs or O-levels.

I was studying in the US at the age when UK students were taking those exams, and it's a wider (and shallower) syllabus so I'd probably have done ok, but I'd probably have failed chemistry as it was a subject I'd managed to do little on (but I'd gotten As in Physics and Botany!)

I went on to get 4 A-Levels and a BSc(hons) but no, I don't think I'd have achieved an English Baccalaureate.

akicif January 15 2011, 01:34:08 UTC

And the Tories talk about Labour's dumbing down of educational standards....

I knew people in the mid-70s who sat a baccalaureate-style exam instead of A levels or Scottish Highers, rather than as the O level / CSE / GCSE replacement of the "English Baccalaureate".

makyo January 15 2011, 02:25:29 UTC

I failed: Mathematics (A), Physics (A), Chemistry (A), French (A), but I didn't do either History or Geography to GCSE level, so that disqualifies me. (I got Bs in Latin and English, and Cs in Music and English Literature ( ... )

timill January 15 2011, 02:51:53 UTC

Not, I think, solely because I don't have English Lit:

English? English Language
Maths? Yes, and Additional Maths.
Languages? French, Latin and Ancient Greek
Humanities? History
Science? Physics, Chemistry and Biology

fjm January 15 2011, 04:32:49 UTC

Oddly enough yes. I say oddly because done this way it disguises how bad my results were. I'd been terribly sick with migraine for years and everything collapsed for me when I was 14. So I ended up with a mere 6 o levels, As at both Englishes, history and maths. Cs at chemistry and german. I worked like crazy at the last two because they were my passports to the history degree. But I got a U at Physics and an E in Art, both of which had been my best subjects only a year before.