Case study
(Note: these are all true, but names and some details have
been changed)
One
Diana Smithson is unashamed. “We knew there was no way that
Peter could pass his electronics GCSE by himself. After two
years he couldn’t solder a connection. It was a disaster.
And no one in our family has ever got less than a C. So we
got in a tutor.”
Politely, the Smithsons asked the school for advice on
private tuition. Coursework deadlines were approaching. And
so -- Peter’s own electronics teacher appeared one Monday
tea-time in the Smithson’s neat semi, soldering gun in
briefcase, equipped to help Peter “design and make an
electronic product that could be manufactured
& marketed in today's society”.
By the third Monday, the remote control for the dishwasher
was still a rough sketch. Tuesday was hand-in deadline.
Peter and Mr Hall had been sitting for hours in the front
room. Suddenly, there were raised voices and Peter emerged,
rubbing his face. Diana was concerned. “What’s wrong,
darling? Have you finished?” He shook his head. “Mr Hall
said to go to bed and he’ll finish it. Says I’m just
getting in the way.” He shrugged and ambled upstairs.
The Smithsons looked at each other. Soft music came from
the front room. Diana popped her head round the door. “Do
you want anything? Cup of coffee?” Crouched before an array
of switches and circuits on the coffee table, the young
teacher scarcely raised his head. “Oh, yeah, thanks. Do you
have any Hob-Nobs?”
Next morning, Diana was surprised to find Mr Hall flaked
out under his coat on the sofa. In front of him, a strange
yet convincing device and an empty packet of Hob-Nobs.
“We paid him, of course, but not for a whole twelve hours.
Anyhow, he said he enjoyed the challenge.” She smiles. “And
Peter got an A, so that was all right.”
Two
Leilah was fretting. English was her favourite subject but
she hadn’t quite got a handle on her A-level coursework.
Title: “Nothing much
happens.” To what extent do you support this view of the
novel, 'Pride and Prejudice'?” But she knew
that her older sister, Sadie, had not only written a
stonking great essay on Pride and Prejudice two years
before but had also gained full marks for it – at another
school.
She sidled up to Sadie. “You know your Austen essay…?”
Sadie scarcely looked up from her reading. Fully immersed
in her Cambridge English studies, A level seemed light
years away. “It’s on the PC, help yourself.”
Leilah approached her English teacher. How about if she
wrote an essay on Pride and Prejudice but with her own (or,
in fact, Sadie’s) title: “Austen is the psychologist of
everyday life but her microcosm reflects a political
macrocosm.” Says Leilah’s mother, laughing indulgently, “I
can’t tell you how impressed he was. The only thing was, he
wanted Leilah to change the title to something more
detailed, about the textures and incidents of
18th-century
life. The final title read: “Austen is the psychologist of
everyday life: Pride and Prejudice weaves the bigger
concerns of the day through the fabric of uneventful
country life.”
No problem: Leilah got 100 per cent. Indignantly, she
refutes the idea that it was wrong to use her sister’s
grade A work. “I changed it a lot,” she says. “I had to cut
it down, it was much too long. And anyhow, it would have
been wasteful not to use it.”
Three
It was the week before Charlie had to hand in his
photography GCSE coursework. He had spent most of that week
hanging round with his mates, skateboarding, smoking “draw”
and getting up late. His parents were at their wits’ end.
Finally, father James snapped.
“I just got the camera and went out in Putney and started
shooting,” he recalls. “I really got into it.” A
high-flying executive who’d always enjoyed art, James read
up on the coursework criteria and systematically started
fulfilling them. He found it easy to justify. “I knew
Charlie was a very talented artist,” he says. “He just
wasn’t up to the deadline.”
GCSE photography involves using a 35mm camera and producing
“three practical assignments supported by research and
underpinning knowledge”. While taking pains that his
supporting research – a written rationale, sketched range
of images, references to other photographers’ work -- was
not wildly superior to Charlie’s as displayed in the
previous control test, James was satisfied that his black
and white visions of traffic and pedestrians in conflict on
Putney streets were up to top GCSE standards.
As indeed they were. The work got an A*. It was just
unfortunate that Charlie came back from a sticky hour
trying to contextualise his work in class to yell that
James had “ruined his life”.
Still, says James smiling bravely, all’s well that ends
well. Charlie is studying art at a top college and earns
money shooting portraits at the weekends. “He learned that
you have to produce,” says James.
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