To ensure that tutoring outfits do not offer "unsuitably" stretching courses, the government instructed them in February to provide education authorities with details of syllabuses and lists of their pupils along with which year they are in at which school.
He said it with a please-leave-me-alone expression.
Gerald Ratner’s fondness for outspokenness (after childhood sales lessons at London’s Petticoat Lane Market) turned sour when he described his jewellery chain’s products as “crap”.
Henry Ford achieved great success with the Model T, but he failed to change it when it became old-fashioned; his dislike of credit also held back Ford when other producers allowed consumers to buy in instalments.
Ronald Reagan became president despite quipping that “I’ve heard that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?”
The meaning of the message is in the receiver.
It was the need to distinguish excellence that led the British to introduce the new A* grade. The French lycée system has plenty to recommend it, not least its meritocratic flavour, since the country’s best schools are state-run.
A report by the University of Cambridge exam board warns British universities considering applicants with the baccalaureate that “an overall result of 16/20 is a rare and outstanding achievement”.
They treated students like numbers.
Across the channel in France, the worries could scarcely be more different. Some educationalists fret that lycée (upper secondary-school) pupils work too hard, are graded too fiercely and are victims of a system designed to fail them.