26/08/2025
When I was doing my GCSEs, my life was a little upside down. And for the few years to follow too. I didn’t have the words back then, but what I was living through required a lot of support. I’d experienced so many losses in a short space of time, and didn’t feel like I knew how to grieve these whilst carrying on. The school system in the 90s wasn’t equipped to see or support me, I slipped through the cracks, carrying wounds that shaped my adulthood, like many of my us do.
I left school with just one GCSE in Art, and never looked back. Years later, when I’d chosen my career in nursing, I went back to sit English, Maths, and Science as an adult. I always had the skills, but the school structure back then simply didn’t suit me, or how I learned and my reality.
Even now, as I reflect on how those experiences left me stuck for years, I disappointingly see how little has changed in education. Yes, laws and legislations have shifted, and on paper schools and local authorities are meant to support young people whatever they’re going through. But the reality is different. Local authorities are overstretched, with inconsistent staffing and shrinking budgets. Teachers and school staff are burnt out, already carrying far more than they can manage, to fit institutional policies based on the “ideal” student. It’s all so far away from reality for many people, yet young people are expected to get on with it and parents to be on the schools side.
It hurts to know that there are still children going through what I went through - being unseen, unsupported, and left to carry it all alone. We can’t keep expecting the system to do more with less. Change has to come from recognising the reality, not just the policy.
So my message to all parents of/and those having recent receiving exam results, and those who might not have been able to take finals for any reason, is:
💫 You are making great progress. Even on those days you feel like you’ve taken a step back, every cell of your being is evolving.
We really need to start asking more questions, in a system which is geared to regurgitate information until we lose sight of individuals reality.
📸 by a school friend of me aged 16
