To think a local newspaper should not print full exam results

[petal2008]

Our local paper prints all the schools' a level and gcse results in their full glory, or not, as the case may be.

This is great for the A star pupils etc but I feel a bit sorry for those students who didn't do so well.

Not only have they possibly got the disappointment of the results but also the residents of the whole city and local villages seeing them as well.

Maybe you sign some sort of disclaimer with the school for them to disclose the results to the press, I'm not sure. I remember giving permission when my DC were at school for their photo to be published.

I just think it's not necessary.

I did O Levels in 1982/83

Some schools had their results published in the local paper but not the RC ones - very odd.

My paper does it. Sales go up by 30% when we do it. I've been there 11 years and we've had one complaint ever. People love having a good nose, that's what local newspapers are all about.

I was looking in our archive the other day at papers from 1950 and we printed details of everyone discharged from the local hospital that day so: Elsie Green, 2 Main St, Greendale, discharged after recovering from gout in left foot. George Manners, 5 High Street, Pencaster, discharged on recovering from stomach ulcer etc..

Our local paper doesn't give results but does say j smith 9 GCSE,s and then in brackets 3 a starred to c grades they did this when I did my gces,s in 1990 !

I'm a journalist on our local paper and we don't do this!

Three local schools send us press releases to accompany pics taken by our photographer, they will include the highest scoring pupils or ones that were accepted to specialist universities (in a-level situation).

We will say % of pupils who scored grades A* to C but never print full results, very unfair.

I remember being sent to court as a reporter and being handed the court list which contained full name, address and charge against defendant.

Our paper would publish the lot - and whatever the outcome was.

It was fab. Especially if a member if the council had been caught drunk driving.

YANBU. The Information Commissioner needs to grow a pair.

Court is different : its public knowledge on TheLawPages anyway, whether or not the papers print it

Exam results are really nobodys business except those that the candidate deems necessary

I remember when they started publishing league tables we did those fir a bit...then started highlighting the 'value-added' scores, most improved schools etc

Our biggest competition was the council's newsletter which became full blown magazine with advertising etc

TheBogQueen, we still get charge sheets but we no longer print full addresses.

Just "John Smith, 36, of Queen Street.

Not that it would really make much difference but if we print house number and they're targeted, we can be hauled over the coals.

We don't print house numbers from court lists either for similar reasons it everything else is fair game. Publicity around court cases is a huge deterrent. I love it when people who have been in court ring me up and demand I take down a story about them off our website because I didn't ask their permission to run the story. They genuinely think that they are in the right. I ask them what they'd think if Peter Sutcliffe has phoned up the YEP and demanded they didn't run details of his trial. It just confuses them more tbh.

Sorry, went a bit off topic there.

Oh yes I remember we used to leave out house numbers

But remember this caused a problem when we had two fireman of a very similar name, same age , same street - one accused of something, another very pissed off when he got his paper .

I remember when the NOTW did their 'Sarah's law' campaign and published names with 'areas' of residence of sex offenders. Some hero decided to leaflet an entire estate assuming a resident (same name/area) was the same as a sex offender mentioned in the paper. Poor guy was a innocent father of three who had to have a policeman stationed outside his front door to fend off the assorted idiots baying for blood outside.

Anyway am getting old. Ignore me

YANBU! I don't think it's a trivial matter either, for all the good reasons listed above.

I am completely astonished at this practice!

We published some of our pupil's results that were outstanding, but only with their express permission, and just a summary (e.g. Kate Smith, 3 A* and 8As etc).

I am pretty sure our LA Data Protection officer would be up in arms. We got told to change our practices after we shared pupil's attendances in form- i.e. in school only, in pupils' own forms

For example, the Manchester Evening News at some point soon will read..
School Name, then list all the year 11 kids in this format:
Bloggs, J. 6(3)
Where the 6 is the number of GCSEs attained, and the number in brackets is how many of the attained were A-C.

But Floop I don't think that is quite what the OP was talking about. We get that format in that august chronicle the Macclesfield Express laughs herself sick But I think the OP was talking about them listing all the actual grades, which I think is quite different. Especially at A level.

When I was at school in the 70s our local paper, The Epworth Bells, didn't consider this a story at all. I don't recall there ever being a mention of exam results except for the occasional personal ad where someone's granny would post an ad to say "Congratulations Norman on passing 7 O levels"

The papers didn't print your school exam results where I grew up, but the local broadsheet did print the names of all the graduating students by degree (with a wee asterix if you got a first) at graduating time from university. My mum bought a copy of the paper specially just because my name was in it.

5Foot5 It is still pretty humiliating isn't it?

Poor Smith, A. who only managed 2 GCSES, none of which were higher than a C.

That's a child protection issue, and easy to slip through the net on consent. I'm amazed that something that archaic is still being done.
YANBU

Has anyone looked at the Data Protection info I posted? I feel like the invisible poster... No LAs Data Protection officer will be outraged, they will know that each school can publish whatever details of its results it so chooses, as long as it makes it clear to all students/parents.

There IS NO DATA PROTECTION issue. GCSEs etc ad PUBLIC EXAMS and so the results are firmly in the public domain.

And it most certainly is NOT A CHILD PROTECTION issue. Firstly, any parent can ask the school to remove their child's name from the list and, secondly, what harm does it do?

Seriously, apart from today's over inflated need for privacy or being the first to announce such information on Facebook, exam results are a fact of life. What harm does it do to a child to have their results published? Oh yes, it is embarrassing for some. Well, tough. Life is embarrassing and the sooner you learn to deal with setbacks the sooner you will become a fully functioning adult. Parents should be supporting their kids to deal with this rather than going into mock heart attack mode.

This is a total non issue - actually it is an issue, very much a 1st world, precious poppet issue!

Blech!

Totally agree, Nomama. First, all the kids in a class have a pretty accurate idea of who's good at X and who's no good at Y. When it comes to physical prowess, it's even more obvious, as it was with me when I was obliged to demonstrate , each week in gym, that I couldn't do a ruddy headspring. OK, bit different now maybe, but everyone will know who's good at games and who's got two left feet.

What it amounts to is this: some parents (most kids don't care enough) have 10 minutes reading the paper going, oh look Sally's daughter did well. Ooh but Jack messed up big time, huh I always said he wasn't as bright as his parents thought he was.

My middle DS properly mucked up his A-levels. Why? Because most kids, at some juncture in their education, reach a point at which they say, what's the bloody point, and lose motivation. With him, it came at 17 and he didn't do enough work. Now he has to deal with it. His results weren't published with names attached but of course people ask him how he did & he has to tell them.

What exactly do the privacy fiends want? To be able to lie about their kids' results if they choose? But are you going to fib to your nearest & dearest? So this is about 'protecting' your child from the opinion of the Joneses.

Seriously, bad exam results need to be faced up to, not hidden away from. You're not doing your child any favours by drawing a veil over their failures. The day after the results, anyone else outside your family who still cares/comments is someone you could do with ignoring on a permanent basis.

Nomama I was very ill during my last couple of years at school and had a lot of shit going on which meant I didn't do as well as I could have done. Luckily my area doesn't publish exam results and a bloody good job too. I was in such a state mentally at that time and combined with my poor results (and nobody would have thought not to publish them) that I probably would of just killed myself.

I'm sure you probably would have thought that was "tough" and a "non issue" though .

You can laugh and brush it aside as if it doesn't matter and I'm sure in most cases it is harmless...however it's silly to pretend it is completely harmless and doesn't or won't hurt nobody ever.

It's a ridiculous practice and should be stopped IMO.

Oh why oh why so I read threads like this one ? I'm actually shaking now and trying not to cry and I was honestly not going to reply at all until I saw fussy's post which made a nice refreshing change to the disgusting attitudes displayed by Oneeyedbloke and Nomama.

My son actually did kill himself last year after he found out his GCSE results had been published in the local newspaper. Maybe it was partly my fault, he'd been battling severe depression, anxiety and self harm for years and had been hospitalised before but I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting him and not letting him know. He found out anyway though.

Before anyone wants to jump in and berate me for allowing his results to be published, I did try so hard to stop them from being published but was basically told "tough".

However he was actually getting better and making progress during those last few months he was alive. He was even joking and laughing the day he killed himself. Even when he brought the newspaper to me looking upset and teary and asking why his results had been published I still thought stupidly he was dong okay. I guess not when I found him dead in his room that night after he'd taken an overdose and left a note where he basically brought up his published results (along with other issues).

Call me deluded if you want but I really do think that if somebody had actually bloody listened to me and not allowed them to be published my son would still be alive today. He was making so much progress but was still ill and I think that was the final straw that tipped him over the edge.

The fact that there are posters here that think these things are "non-issues" sickens me.

People can make fun of me all they like about my "mock heart attack mode" for wanting to (and failing) to protect my child during his most vulnerable state and other teenagers who might be going through similar but that says more about you than it does about me.

I'm so sorry justanotherpersonagian that this happened to you son and even sadder that you had to read this thread. I was on it earlier,but it seems to have taken a bit of a turn.

This policy makes no allowances for the more vulnerable students and I think it is a disgrace. There is nothing to be gained from publishing the names and it would be so much kinder to make the results anonymous. For some pupils this is nothing short of public humiliation.

justanotherpersonagain I know it's hard but you just have to ignore the nasty judgmental people. Just continue doing what you're doing and forget about anyone who wants to make fun of you. Like you said it says more about them than it does about you.

Like I said before I'm so glad that my area doesn't have this ridiculous policy of publishing people's results because if they did I probably wouldn't be here either. I was so vulnerable at the time that I would have simply just killed myself.

Our local paper does this too. Full names and grades. They don't ask for permission as mine we're put in and I/my family definitely didn't give them permission!

justanother I am sorry for your loss, having lost a family member to suicide I am deeply empathetic, however my opinion on this does not make me, or any other poster, disgusting.

Sorry fussy but you are wrong about me on all counts.

1. You could have asked school not to print your results, as could anyone. Despite justanother's post, I know we would not have told any parent 'tough' and I find it hard to believe any school or LA would. The 'policy' does make allowances for parental decisions.
2. I don't think being ill for an extended time is funny, tough or a non issue
3. You have ascribed to me thoughts and feelings, views etc based on your personal experience. Fine, everyone does, but it does not mean that your experience should be the benchmark for everyone.

That some students are vulnerable is a given. But they are NOT the norm. If you want to change the policy don't shout at me, get onto your LA, the Information Commissioner's Office and tell them. I can assure you they will have already considered these issues before coming to the decision they have.