With the Easter break over, Year 11 students across the globe are faced with the same doom: examinations.

The dreaded GCSEs are upon Year 11s and Hayes school has thought of no better way to welcome us back than to greet us with the PPEs. For the rest of the Universe who have no idea what the PPEs are: they are an abbreviation for Pre-Public Examinations – basically mock exams (though our head of year will have a heart attack if he hears that word since – and I quote- “they are not to be mocked with”).

Yes, the PPEs are a brilliant way to prepare us for what is to come; however, I am not the only one that believes the first day back at school, after a two week long break, should be spent settling back into the school routine and briefly catching up with friends in oppose to having mathematical questions lobbed at our eye sockets (I may be exaggerating – just a bit).

But I digress. The GCSEs are just weeks away meaning the pressure is high as we slowly realise we don’t have that long until we’re in total control of sheets of paper that may determine the rest of our lives. Some students have stated that school “feels like hell with paper” which is understandable considering despite the fact that the GCSEs are storming towards us like a bolder down a hill, teachers are still setting mountains of homework with impossible deadlines.

Nevertheless we should be grateful in the way that we even have access to education seeing that millions of people my age (and yours are deprived of this basic right. 

 

 

written by Olaitan Koleosho, Hayes School