Getting results. And emojis.

A Level Results Day! 

I’m a little confused. Traditionally A Level results have been released on the second Thursday in August, followed by GCSE results on the next Thursday. This year they’ve come out today, which is Tuesday, and GCSE results will appear on Thursday, a week earlier than usual.

A Level results day marked the end of my summer holidays for years when I worked in sixth form colleges. I wasn’t obliged to go into work on results day but I wanted to see my students as they received their results. And the more teaching staff available the better to help students who had not quite achieved the grades demanded by the universities who had offered them places needed not only consoling but helping to phone the universities and find out if they might take them anyway and if not to go through the system known as “clearing”. As universities had places available because of students not making the grades this system matched up unplaced students to unfilled university courses. Would it not be simpler to wait until everyone had their grades before allocating students to courses? Well, yes, but the system is the system.

The week after A Level results day we were always back in college for training days of one sort or another and then GCSE Results Day came along and we began enrolment. And suddenly summer was most definitely over and we were back in the process once again! I always enjoyed the bustle of starting a new term, getting to know a new cohort of students but even more to meet again the second year students, always so much more mature than they were twelve months previously, even than they were two and a half months previously at the end of their first year of sixth form.

Ahhh! Nostalgia!!

Our A Level candidate, granddaughter number two, is happy to have achieved three decent grades, enough to be able to accept a place at the university of her choice.

Michael Rosen had this to say about grades:

“We are being told that there is 'grade inflation' this year so we can return to the grim reality of one-off, high stakes testing. Maybe grades are up because counting course work means that most students do better! They can show what they know,  better than in exams.”

Part of the problem is that grades have always been adjusted to achieve a pre-conceived percentage spread over the grades available, making the grade boundaries move up or down from year to year. Unfairness and inflation built into the system! So it goes!

We wait for Thursday now to see what our 16 year old grandson has managed by way of GCSE grades. 

Meanwhile lots of smiley faces, hearts and thumbs-ups have been “emojied” to granddaughter number 2.

I was reading about emojis. A whole new batch is about to be added, and the range of the ones ai have mastered remains quite limited. Some people communicate almost entirely by emojis apparently

“Now, with electronic writing and emojis at our fingertips, even those without any artistic talent can easily “write” a number of pictorial symbols, from a smirk to a syringe, from a bento box to a pregnant man. “

Quite why anyone needs a pregnant man emoji escapes me but the proposal for such an emoji reads as follows:

“One’s sex does not dictate the capacity to care for children in the home or work in the market. In the same way sex equality law has aimed to combat harmful sex stereotypes, there are a great deal of parallels regarding how one’s sex does not dictate the capacity to carry children.”

Okay! I remain unconvinced. But in the meantime I was puzzled by the reference to the “bento box”. Is this another new modern thing I have not heard of? No, it’s a Japanese manufactured lunch box, sometimes with compartments to put sauces and dips in, often sold with matching cutlery. So presumably it should be a Bento box with a capital B. No foil wrapped sandwiches in a paper bag for today’s office worker. 

Anyway, getting back to emojis, experts say we understand messages better if accompanied by emojis. So I will continue to add flowers and rainbows and such to messages I send. And there I was thinking it was just a bit of fun.

The experts do say though that because emojis lack verbs and tenses they cannot be expected to develop into a full-blown language in their own right. Did anyone really think that was a possibility?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!