Class Rebel
‘AFTER yesterdays story about how any student with a pen, or at least the intention of one day owning one, is given an A-level comes more news from the confused world of education.
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| No smoking at Marlborough |
While we will have to wait a while to hear the annual tales of how some northern girl scored nine A grades in her A-levels and was still denied a place to study at Oxbridge, we do get to hear of 15-year-old Rhys Gray.
Gray is no star pupil. Indeed, the sullen yoof has just been expelled from the £21,900-a-year Marlborough College, the same school attended by Princess Eugenie, as the Times thinks it right and proper to point out.
Grays crimes are many, and are said to include such rebellious and daring capers as, er, chewing gum in class, forgetting his books and smoking a cigarette.
While not exactly electrocuting the dinner ladies or impregnating the headmasters Labrador, such shenanigans are still too much for the shapers of future captains of industry and ladies who lunch to take. Rhys must go.
But not so, says his dad, one Russell Gray, who guarantees himself a face-to-face meeting with the schools headmaster by posing for a picture in the Telegraph.
Daddy says his son should not be rusticated, but allowed to continue at the institutions sixth form. As current rules stipulate, the minimum qualification for entering the schools sixth form is six GCSE passes, including at least three at Grade B or above.
Since a typing gibbon could score that, the conditions for entry do not appear onerous. But still Russell says this is unfair.
So hes taking his complaint to court thus virtually guaranteeing that his son will look as cool as a roast polar bear dipped in chilli oil.
Mr Grays central moan is that the schools contract with the parents is vague and gives unreasonable and unfair powers to the governors and head teachers.
So on Monday the case will be heard at Swindon Country Court. If Mr Gray loses, he says he will be happy to remove his son from the school. The same if the boy fails to achieve the minimum GCSE requirement.
If he wins, Mr Gray expects his son to be allowed entry into the schools sixth form where he will be seen as a conquering hero by his peers.
And a very odd kind of rebel by the rest of us…’
Posted: 16th, August 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
