Being married to an Old Etonian is a bit like living with a war veteran. Most of the time, they remain stoically silent about the things they’ve seen and done. But every now and then, they casually let slip an anecdote or a piece of institutional lingo so strange that it bends the mind.
For me, there is no Etonism more dumb-founding than the “General, Total Failure”. This is what, when my husband was at school, they called the lowest-achieving boy in the school.
And by “they”, I don’t mean a gang of horrible playground bullies. I mean the teachers.
Every year, all the boys were herded into the school theatre to learn how they had fared in their exams. Not just whether they had passed or failed, but their overall academic position at the school. Each boy’s name and ranking was read aloud in ascending order, with the person who came bottom declared a “General, Total Failure”, or GTF.
“The worst thing was, it was always the same boy,” says my husband. “Every year: ‘J. Toffington-Boffington* — General Total Failure.’ What would that do to your soul?”
A similar sort of question is now being asked by parents at Ashington High School Sports College — a state school in Northumberland that has suddenly come over all Etonian. After a critical Ofsted report this year, the school is trying to raise standards fast. To that end, it has produced a new academic ranking system for its GCSE students, so that they can compare themselves against their peers.
All the pupils in Year 11 were taken into the caretaker’s bungalow, where, pinned to the walls, they found photographs of themselves alongside their personal “performance data”. The thinking seems to be that, with only a few weeks to go before they sit their GCSEs, a stiff blast of competition might concentrate the mind.
But modern children are delicate creatures — and their parents even more so. More than 40 parents have complained, saying the ranking system has dented the confidence of less able students, embarrassed those who are now seen as swots, and put everyone under unbearable pressure.
Is open competition really so dangerous? Practitioners of progressive education certainly think so: they have been trying to stamp it out in state schools for decades. But they have only succeeded in covering it up. At my son’s primary school, the teachers go to elaborate lengths to avoid making the children feel judged.
Reports are written in a determinedly upbeat, chirpy tone, listing all the wonderful things Little Jimmy can do — “His finger paintings are coming on marvellously” — while dropping near-invisible hints about the things he might like to “work on”, such as reading and writing.
No clue is given as to how Jimmy compares to his peers, and any parent vulgar enough to ask will be met with disapproving silence. Yet children are keenly aware of the invisible rankings.
My seven-year-old son knows perfectly well that the pupils who sit on “Acorn” table are better readers than those on “Oak”, whatever teachers say.
Mightn’t it be more helpful — less stressful, even — to be honest? I was the equivalent of a General Total Failure at every school I attended. But because no one ever told me this to my face, I had to deduce my position in the rankings — by scrutinising teachers’ expressions as they handed back homework, studying the body language of other families at parents’ evenings, and, ultimately, by failing my exams.
Eton, incidentally, no longer has a GTF category. But each child goes home with a report card ranking his academic position. Fear, humiliation and competition may come in a gentler guise now — but they still get results.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2015 * Names have been changed to protect the GTF — who, I like to imagine, is now a mega-rich hedge fund manager, laughing evilly as he fondles his gold-plated cat.
