To be surprised you mumsnetters criticised my ex’s school !!

[Jumell]

My ex went to an all boys’ comprehensive school in London. It’s been slagged off to the ground on here as being rough, not being the school of choice for MC parents, results are dire etc etc .

However he did leave the school in one piece and with 2 CSEs no less!! (OK showing his age a bit!) But the pearl clutchiness about his school on MN is immense !! 🤣 - I didn’t do CSEs btw so don’t truly know how good 2 CSEs is.
He left school in 1986 FYI - I was still a young school kid then, Dunno - was 2 CSEs good for 1986?!

FWIW the comp I went to wasn’t short for ‘comprehensive’ - more compost heap - but that’s possibly the subject of another thread. !

Did you really mean to be quite so dismissive?

"However there were about 9 grades at CSE"

No there weren't, there were five.

"...if you were likely to get the top grade you would have been sitting the GCSE instead (or as well)"

That certainly didn't happen in my school. As I mentioned above, I was lucky to get a Grade 1 in French (I was pretty rubbish at languages compared to other subjects). The school never considered putting me in for O Level.
.

"...so to only get 2 is shit. It's virtually impossible to fail a CSE."

I hate to be the person to say this, but could you share your sources for this please?

A star ffs!! The * didn't show up!

I was talking about A levels, don't think that was clear.

Confession time.

I took 10 GCSEs in 1990. I got 5 As and 3 Bs in all my academic subjects, plus 2 Ds in Art and Drama. These two were examined by a different board to the rest so they are on a separate GCSE certificate.

I have destroyed all evidence that I ever took Art and Drama at GCSE and my entire education and career has been built on a lie that I took 8 GCSEs and got all As and Bs.

😱😱😱😂

2 CSEs is pretty dire!I left a pretty rubbish comp in 1985 with 9 O Levels and 4 Alevels.

Another way of looking at this ……

I left school in 1980 with 7 CSEs .
School back then had 4 years and you could stay and do a 5th year for A levels.
They decided the latter end of the 2nd year if you were bright enough to do O levels or you got put into CSE classes when you returned to do your 3/4th year after summer term .
I was very quiet and shy and hated school . I got 2 top grade CSEs for my favourite subjects and the rest were grades 2,3 and 4 .
I recently got a diagnosis for ADHD, which would totally make sense with how I was at school . I couldn’t concentrate , daydreamed and just didn’t ‘get’ maths .
My Two favourite subjects were French studies and Food/nutrition and I totally hyper focused on these making up fabulous written folders of coursework on these two subjects. The rest I wasn’t really bothered about.

I very highly suspect a lot of us CSE ers were ADHD ….. I went to a girls school and as we know, back then ADHD was mostly recognised in boys and not girls .
I’ve gone on to do well for myself work wise….. ok not to Uni standard but worked my way up career ladders . People laugh when I tell them my qualifications as apparently I look intelligent 😂….
i learnt maths by working in a pub when my kids were babies . I can speak and spell a lot better than most young people I know. I’m shocked at the standard of education now.
CSEs are not a judge of how intelligent a child would have been as I’ve heard so more similar stories to my own .

But was one of them an "ology".

I don't think Princess Diana was dim actually - she wasn't academic but she had other attributes/accomplishments.

She wasn't born a royal so I am not sure how their intelligence and hers bore any relation to each other.

Pretty "dim' observation I'd say.

I went to a very academic school in the 70s/80s and it wasn't as rare as you seem to think. One year a student achieved 5 A grades at A level. That was exceptional.

I myself got 6 As, 2 Bs (and a U lol!) in my O levels and 2 A 2 B at A level. There was a group of us who achieved similarly. Some went to Oxbridge.

There was a report on school exams published in 1978 (The Waddell Report) about replacing O Levels and CSEs with a common exam - what became the GCSE.

This from para [5] explaining what percentage of the population each exam was intended to cover:

"The target populations of the two examinations are different, although with some overlap (the O Level examination tending to be aimed at the upper 20 per cent of the full ability range and CSE catering for the next 40 per cent)"

A grade 1 CSE certainly put you in the top 20% (equivalent to about a GCSE 7 nowadays) and a grade 2 or 3 CSE put you in the top 55% (about a GCSE 4-5 today).

A grad 4 or 5 CSE would be equivalent to a GCSE 3-4 today

No, 2 CSEs was not good. I think the average was at least 5 and most people took between 9 and 11.

I took o levels, but there has been considerable articles in the press over the years to say that CSE’s were very difficult to get a good grade in, so were difficult qualifications to get rather than the second class certificate that some people regard them as.

I can remember my father who graded exams in the summer holidays, expressing the same thought too.

So if you got Grade 1 CSE’s you should have been very proud of yourself, in reality

Would you think getting 2 GSCE’s was impressive? This is the weirdest post.

A grade C at OLevel was difficult - there weren’t many B or C’s flying around and A was rare.

That said most kids left with 5 - maths English science’s then either art, typewriting, etc

No CSE in religion or sports for example.

2 is quite poor to be fair - but you were still guaranteed a job.

The jobs market has changed.

They may have taken them. How many of them did they pass and with what grades?

Well, at my school most people did 0 levels and the average was 7 or 8. Those people who did CSEs also got mostly 7 or so.I also remember it was pretty hard to fail CSEs. I cant remember all my grades but I did a few more alongside my A levels so had 13 0 levels. So yes, 2 CSEs is pretty low.

"That said most kids left with 5"

You are mistaken. Only around the top 20% of pupils passed an O Level.

Then around another 40% passed CSE and the bottom 40% didn't pass at all.

I did well at school and most of my friends also did well. But I'm equally aware that many others at our school didn't do so well. Indeed, around 80% left at the end of the fifth year (currently year 11) and a number left as soon as possible after they turned 16 which meant leaving before taking any exams.

Yes, that's exactly my point. 5 As at A level was exceptional. A girl in my year achieved that and went to Oxford to do a STEM degree.

I had a Saturday job in the last few years of school. That was a useful life lesson. The other girls who worked there mostly went to comps. I could see from the way they worked that they were bright and quick on the uptake (better at the work than I was, very obviously) but when they talked about school it was clear that very little was expected of them compared with my school. They talked about possibly being put in for one or two O levels alongside their CSEs, but they didn't expect to pass them and they certainly didn't expect to stay on in education after 16. I've met a lot of women like this in my life. What a terrible waste of talent it was.

If he left that school in 1986 then why on earth are you fretting about what the MN opinion of it is now? A lot has probably changed in most schools in the last 38 years.

And no, 2 CSEs was never good. CSEs were for the people who couldn't pass O' levels.

You have done my ego the world of good by sying that, Another2Cats. I never considered I was anything special but I did get my 'O' levels - so I am in the top 20%! Whoopee! I enjoyed doing my 'O' levels actually, can still remember a lot of what I learned, and wrote in the exams, or some of them. I managed to BS my way through some, used to be good at that.

As someone who got 5 As at AS Level, and 3 at A Level, I was so cross when they introduced A*s!

He also lived in a rough estate

I notice on Facebook he commented on one of his old neighbours FB posts

“we all enjoyed your mum’s lovely Burritos”

I hope HOPE HOPE this wasn’t a euphemism ! 🤣

Now I am thinking about it @Jumell, I remembered that I took Chemistry at CSE although I was in O levels for all the other subjects - but I was bad at Chem so they put me in for the CSE (its a really long time ago so had forgotten it). I did not care about it at all so amused myself by colouring in the circles in pretty patterns and did not open the question book at all. then left as soon as I was allowed to leave the hall. And I still got a passing grade!

Haha result!!

To be fair @Owly11 is right; even if you might not like it.
This is where comprehensive education is wrong in my view; yes everyone should get proficient in core subjects but none academic kids should be given the option of learning trades instead of being forced to get pointless qualifications that carry no weight post school. Two CSEs wouldn't help get any job. People I know that gained that level of academic achievement at school went on to become successful landscape gardeners, fencers etc. There was no benefit to anyone of forcing them through a Comprehensive education.

Surely thousands of kids have been through since your husband got his 2 cse