I just don’t get the politics behind this O’Level business.

This, admittedly, could be for a number of reasons. For a start, I did those bleddy awful GCSE things where you practically only have to spell your name right on the top of the paper and they pass you. Of course, that’s not what happened in my day, old bean. Oh no, GCSEs were far tougher back then - especially as we had to walk through four miles of snow to get to them, take a birching once we got there, and we were damned grateful for it. Youth of today? Don’t know they’re born.

So forgive the ignorance of one from a south coast state school, whilst she gives you the view from the foothills.

On the phone to my dad the other day, I expressed my bemusement at the policy. What Gove is proposing is to introduce a system where high grades are more difficult to attain. Roger that, so far: dad’s all over this sort of sentiment and one of the most frequently played songs on the album of Smith Père’s Greatest Hits is that classic, “They’re Giving A Grades Away Free With Haircuts These Days.” The fact that my dad did O’Levels but the only Latin he can remember is, “Amo, amas amat. A mess, a muddle, a mixup,” is, obviously, neither here nor there.

Now, such outrage may work very well in Telegraph editorials next to 16-year olds jiggling obligingly on exam results day, but it becomes a different beast altogether when the measures come into force.

Fast-forward to 2015 results day: blondes bouncing their boobies may be in less abundance than in previous years, much to the distress of the Daily Mail in more ways than one. If a new system is introduced to make exams more difficult then, it follows, that grades will fall. So all those middle class parents who want darling Jocasta to go onto university are going to be righteously indignant when she arrives home with substantially lower marks than universities have been given to expect in previous years.

If I’ve learned anything on my years on this planet, it’s that when middle-class kids stop performing at school, it’s not down to lack of ability, it’s down to “failings in the system” which is why, a cynic might think, that the number of A-grades has increased dramatically since I sat my – obviously much harder – exams. And the problem with middle class kids, is that their parents tend to vote in greater numbers than those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I can’t think that this is going to augur well for the popularity of the government that chose to introduce such a policy.

In 1991 CEO Gerald Ratner joked that his company’s merchandise was “crap”, nearly causing the firm’s collapse. Gove is saying the same about the current system as an argument to replace it with one that reduces the academic capital of those who would previously have no problem getting As. Might this have the equivalent political effect?

Dad reckons that maybe Gove thinks he’s doing the right thing, a view that was met with a derisive snort from my end of the telephone. But, then again, I did GCSEs. What would I know?

Tags: GCSEs, Michael Gove, O Levels, Sadie Smith