Thank god my parents didn’t put me in the Grammar School pressure cooker!

Eleven Plus. Grammar school. Tuition. In the Indian community, you will hear those words more than any others and everyone thinks they have a catalyst-like effect on their pressure cooker kids! Well, the truth is, unnecessary exam mayhem actually has an adverse implication and this post is dedicated to all those parents out there who love using their favourite topic of discussion to make kids miserable, without properly regarding the long term ramifications. This grammar school fiasco is the best way you can exert the most stress on your ten year old and the tag of being a ‘dumb state school kid’ is like having an annoying thorn stuck in your neck, with nobody to help you get it out.

Most of my life in the UK has been spent in my fairly low ranked grammar school, most often assumed to be a state one, because aunties have given it a strong 2/10! But for those who may be unknowing about the real education system here, I’ll give you a breakdown. You go to a primary school until you are ten or eleven years old, after that it’s grammar versus state, whichever one you end up in becomes your daily life for the next five years. You already know which one supposedly makes your child sophisticated, wise and provides the best life skills! If you cracked that, then you must also have picked up on where the weak-minded kids go to waste time! So, not only has society managed to find a system that limits the potential of younger ones so early on in their life, it has given aunties and uncles the tempting opportunity to set out an unhealthy competitive environment, hence many like me have had to take an abundance of insults.

I’m not inveighing against the idea of grammar schools, because I think it’s fine for someone to want to send their child to a place that has been historically well performing. That is their family choice. It’s the stigma around those who go elsewhere that is ridiculous. How can a child be defined by their School? Even if, for instance, academia = child’s entire personality and growth, can’t there be high achievers at not so great schools? Your character is a result of everything you have done and things you have learnt. You are the epitome of your talents, highs, lows, education and many many more things!. Even though everything I have just said makes sense, the malaise of putting a poor pre-teen through sets on sets of exams and bullying them for it if they didn’t quite catch onto what was happening or just weren’t mentally ready, continues. Year five Diya was too occupied trying to figure out how to get her Mum to make Biriyani for dinner and the only thing she wanted to do was be a kid. She wanted to play, force her brother to dance with her and sometimes pretend to be a grown-up. Only pretend though, as she wasn’t wholly ready to sit exams that resolved her family’s social status and apparently sketch out who she was.

Someone who couldn’t agree with me more on this subject, is my Dad. He has a lot to say: The one thing about academics in this country that has really managed to amuse me is that the only exam ever seeming to need a series of preparatory mocks in amazingly well-organised mock centres is eleven plus. These concentration camps have sprouted up in scores, with geographical distribution ridiculously corresponding to areas having sizeable Indian populations and with their organisers literally minting money at each one of them. Ever been to one of these centres? Or for that matter to an official 11 plus exam centre? The first thing that hits you at these places is the absolute dominance of Indian crowd – super serious, almost intimidating parents with shaky little kids whose grey matters are about to get rubbed against each others’. Scenes of acrimonious comparison of scores and deep-dive analysis of questions and answers that the poor minnows couldn’t handle blend rather naturally with pictures of other, more “fortunate” or “blessed” families showing off some super result sheets or walking off with the victorious look of having confidently settled their kids’ careers for good. You can’t help wondering why it is that just Indians compete in this crude way? Do other communities routinely love letting the careers of their kids simply go to the dogs? It is almost as if applying this kind of pressure on innocent young minds is the only route Indian parents can figure out to demonstrating wholesome parenting and attaining some degree of self realisation. Or maybe just a futile attempt to reproduce old school practices despite decades having elapsed since roughly the same thing was done to them by their own parents and despite the modern education system actually going all out to discourage anything that curbs free and healthy nourishment of a young mind? “I was born intelligent, education ruined me” – a rather bold title of a book written by someone, somewhere but at these treacherous mock centres, you will hear every innocent face yelling this out to you, loud and clear.

My lovely parents let me mature at my own pace and never let the cognisable burden of this pressure cooker drama be too much for me. They told me to pay little attention to all the braggadocio from those who were provokingly stentorian, because humbleness is golden. I was reminded by them to be confident. I had nothing to lose, zilch was gone and my whole life was ahead of me…I would succeed with a good attitude and a steady grind . Thus, I worked with sincerity and diligence to see that dulcet smile filling proud faces upon finding out I got into my firm choice university. In a few weeks I’m going to study Maths and Statistics at the University of Leeds. I can’t wait to go and be friends with those A* grammar school students, private school brainiacs and of course, those like me. I’ll tell them how funny I think it is that we all ended up in exactly the same place, a Russell Group university.

I guess I made it without being pressure cooked!