the maths lesson

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My stomach is rumbling and I'm in a silent classroom. The room is silent because the students are busy partaking in the joy of a mock non-calculator maths exam. Their faces are lit up with happiness and their eyes shine bright with the anticipation of numbers, protractors, compasses and formulae. This paper, and another in a few weeks, will determine whether they can resit their maths exam in November, or if they have to retake it in the distant future of June. They don't want to be here. They came here to study Travel and Tourism, Hair and Beauty or Hospitality. The government insists that the failure of achieving at least a grade C in GCSE maths and English is NOT an option and therefore they must resit them at college. Fail again? Try again. There are a surprising amount of dead horses being flogged in colleges up and down the land. I do feel for them. Of course maths and English are important, but telling people they're failures because they passed an exam but didn't get a high enough grade is absolutely bonkers. Some will achieve their C grade in November. Others in June. Still more will 'fail' again, by only achieving a D again. And if those students continue to study they will have to do maths again. And they may only achieve a D again. Because that's all they're capable of at this moment in time; that's their limit, their full mathematical potential. But we keep plodding on and plodding on, flogging the dead horse and keeping our fingers tightly crossed despite knowing it will make no difference. And if it {Oh, Hallelujah!} does make a difference it will be conveniently forgotten as the brain decides it isn't information which is needed anymore. Which sort of defeats the object, doesn't it? The clock is ticking.