Lucy

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it.

We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill.

Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes.

We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass.

And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams.

For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist.

And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves.

We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery.

Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

[Alex Macdonald @alexfmac]

I hope this photo is a watershed moment.

Forced to carry on to the end of the race with a broken back.

Collapsed & died after the finish line.

RIP Gold Dancer.

If you’re making money off this kind of suffering - how do you look at yourself in the mirror?

[jess 💚 @jessasstrophe]

put this in the NHS vaccination leaflet immediately

[Louise Donaldson @Loulameg]

I prefer the term cashier tbf

[Seabrook Crisps @SeabrookCrisps]

Taylor Swift announcing her engagement just as we were going to announce the return of Spring Onion flavour.

Clearly trying to bury our news. Is she in the pockets of Big Crisp?

[ivy @ohhhhhherewegoo]

the new pope right now

[Liberty Jane Lester @libertylester]

He’s not even been born yet

[Scott Bryan @scottygb]

It has been quite the year, so as a distraction from all that here are my WTF TV news moments from 2024 ✨

[Susie Dent @susie_dent]

Word of the day is ‘recrudescence’ (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.

[Lucy @loulelliott]

@OfficialBHAFC @WayfairUK @ManCity #WayfairMatchday

[Adam Schwarz @AdamJSchwarz]

I've been asked what my favourite commentary is on the budget and it's unquestionably this exchange.

[Fantasy Premier League @OfficialFPL]

Goal - WELBECK
Assist - MITOMA

Brighton 1-0 Man Utd (32 mins)

#FPL #BHAMUN

[Politics For You @PoliticoForYou]

🚨🚨🚨

[VeryBritishProblems @SoVeryBritish]

Don’t worry about your A-level exam results, in 20 years’ time you’ll be more worried about:

1. Not being able to move your neck for half a day because you slept a bit funny
2. Hoping any event you attend has adequate seating
3. Staying in for parcels with a delivery window of “between 6am and 10pm” (and they might not come at all)
4. Something silly and embarrassing that you said 20 years ago
5. All your teaspoons going missing. Where do they go?!
6. Trying to kick a ball back to a random young person in the park without falling over
7. Finding it exciting to look at sheds at the garden centre
8. Searching for the perfect hoover
9. Hairs: grey ones/ones now growing from your ears/receding ones
10. The fact you can’t bend down without making a loud groaning noise

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Holy shit‼ This middle class Southern white woman just destroyed Elon Musk and his bullshit white male tech bro patriarchy. 🔥🔥🔥

[Julie Superhuman @JuSuperhuman]

Society used to put people like this in a facility and just electrocute them all day.

[Cassie Young @ModernCassie]

This is why working with children is so brilliant.

‘Arthur lives down the hill and I live up the hill.’ 🥰

[Tom George @TomGeorge94]

Members of the local community have rallied to rebuild this wall outside the mosque after it was damaged in last night’s disorder @MENnewsdesk

[Scott Bryan @scottygb]

BBC News showing footage of George Galloway pretending to be a cat as we wait for Rishi Sunak to speak.

That’s it. I’m done for this week. Honestly.