Boris Johnson, who is on another holiday, is reported as describing today’s A Level results in England as ‘robust’. Robust certainly for students at private (public)schools for who a Tory algorithm reportedly appears to have enhanced results while at the same time downgrading them for many of those at more plebeian genuinely public schools in the State sector.
Johnson has an interesting history when it comes exams.
At Balliol College, Oxford University he narrowly missed a first after what he would presumably now call a robust viva (personal examination by tutors).
As Sonia Purnell notes in her biography Just Boris, he had spent much of the last term partying rather than studying.After falling asleep in a classics class shortly before his final exams his Master at Balliol noted that he might just get a third class degree.
Instead he managed a good Upper Second on the basis not of hard work or intellectual achievement but because as one Don quoted by Purnell suggests he was ‘so evidently a good egg’.
Unfortunately those with lowered A Level grades today were not the beneficiaries of such class solidarity
I didn’t think Oxford divided second class degrees