I left school in 1982 with 5 GCEs (the old O levels) although my mother always included the 3 D grades got and called it eight, found a job and got on with life. I found a partner at the local am-dram society that I joined, so my life should have been complete. However after 12 years of marriage we decided to increase the size of our family not once but twice.
Back to the origins of this blog, I still only have a handful of GCEs and two small children and as far as I could see nothing to show other than the family for my 40 years of living! What to do I know teaching! So I go to the careers advice centre. I need a degree to start with and experience in a school. No A levels and need degree!
A search on the internet introduced me to The Open University. I looked them up, they don't require A levels! Great so what am I good at - well I did get a B graded GCE in Computer Science back when we were programming in Fortran and BASIC, and I was a Data Inputter for Press Association in their accounts department for 5 years so will do that.
I tried the computer test they had which suggested my knowledge was good enough to propel me straight in at a level 2 course, not being sure I checked out their proposed route through the B29 Computing degree, which advised starting with a level 1 course MU120 Open Maths, I consulted the finances and paid for this first course. Start Date February 2005! In December the box of books arrived. As Maths was one of the GCE grade Ds I achieved, I panicked and took the dog for a walk!
The OU were fantastic I found I could understand the course work and learnt to write essays, plan and to schedule everything even the housework just so I could keep up with the course schedule. There were two types of assignments to do Tutor marked assignments and computer marked assignments and back in 2005 both were dispatched via the post office, including one from a small sub post office in Porthcurno Cornwall as that's where we were on holiday. I say holiday but in reality my partner was involved in a touring show at the Minack Theatre.
By Christmas with the maths pass under my belt I had signed up for course number 2, M150 Data, Computing and Information. These two course could get me a certificate in maths and computing which I hoped would make up for my lack of a Maths GCE.
The final assignment for M150 saw me writing an essay on the practicalities of Quantum computing, just theory back then but with the development on the D-Wave in Canada this has now become a reality, just eight short years later, that's how fast the world of computing moves. October 2006 and I started M263 the Building Blocks of Software and more importantly I would have an exam to complete at the end of it.
I was also volunteering at my daughters' primary school when a Teaching Assistant suggested that I could complete a TA course and be paid to work at the school, so at the end of the M263 course, I applied to the local college for the TA course and as I was working at degree level, they were happy for me to attempt the level 3 BTEC, which I did to distinction. Now I had A level equivalent qualifications and I applied for a job at the primary school which I also got.
So following a year out to complete the BTEC I restarted the quest for a Degree. We also suffered the loss of my partners salary through redundancy which we used to pay for some of the courses. By 2010 I had completed three more OU courses, learning Java on the way, the OUs open source language of choice as well as learning to use BlueJ and Netbeans environments. It had become a standing joke that I would be 50 before had my degree as it seamed to be taking so long.
I met another work colleague who decided to follow the OU route to gain their degree. In the meantime I kept plugging away. My family were very accommodating and accepting that I was busy most nights, the children mostly did their homework without too much fuss!
In October 2010 I took on my most challenging section, three courses across 18 months with a crossover of five months where a level one course T175 Networked Living: exploring information and communication technologies was due to finish in June 2010, with M256 Software Development with Java, and M362 Developing Concurrent and Distributed Systems starting in February 2011! To top it all M362 was my first level 3 course and now everything really counts for the end degree classification, so a good grade is required!
The result for M362 were good but the M256 result suffered, I had put most of my resources into M362. M175 only required a pass which I did. So with a Grade 3 for M256 and a Grade 2 for M362, I set about gaining a further 60 credits out of the remaining 120 credits needed to complete the degree. 2012 saw me attempt M363 Software Engineering with Objects and M359 Relational Databases: Theory and Practice. Following another grade 2 and grade 3, I entered the last 60 credits fearful for the final outcome of my degree classification.
My final year, saw me combine TM470 The Computing and IT project with M364 The Fundamentals of Design. For the project I decided to design, programme and populate a database, which would work on the reading books and children in a school. The first TMA went well with a good schedule and draft designs. TMA 02 was a disaster, with the mark dropping by almost half and some scathing remarks and home truths. The next TMA was essentially billed as the last opportunity to finalise the project before final hand in, I was not hopeful and yet the mark improved significantly up to the low 90s. The final hand in bought about a good grade 2, yet again M364 scored one percentage mark below a grade 2 at 69% in the exam where as the assignments were worth 84%, just one percent below the threshold of a distinction, but at the OU it is the lower mark that decides the end result so I had another grade 3 and I thought a 2:2 classified degree. When the notification came through in December as a 2:1 Honours, I accepted before they could change their minds.
Now had a classification I could go back to where I started. Now I needed to try and start my journey to be a teacher. My lack of GCEs meant I could not be a primary teacher, so I looked at teaching Computing and attended a School Direct event. School Direct is on the job training and is salaried. Excitedly I applied through UCAS and went for and interview. When there I discovered that would need to do a maths test (AHHhhhh) and an English test. I know I blew the Maths test when I could remember how to do long multiplication, it was as if my brain was paralysed, it simply refused to work. Needless to say I didn't get that job, but the interviewer suggested I should try the PGCE route and in particular to try Greenwich University.
I waited for the January deadline and then applied again through UCAS, I found I was entitled to a bursary because I wanted to teach computing and had a 2:1 degree. In February I had an interview and received a conditional offer on the PGCE Computer Science and IT course. I has to pass the QTS skills tests in English and Maths.
In the meantime I went to the Barbican to collect my scroll, it was a fantastic and moving occasion which I should have shared with Tony Benn but unfortunately he died the previous week. Best of all the standing joke didn't quite come true, the ceremony was two weeks before my fiftieth birthday!
I passed the English then just as was about to take the Maths I was informed that I needed to sit a GCSE Maths equivalency exam (panic) and I was still not confident that I would pass the Maths skills test. I did pass the maths test. I then set about the enormous task of studying for a Maths GSCE in only six weeks. Two weeks were spent going through an Edexcel revision book belonging to my eldest child and then working through one of their work books. Very much to my surprise I passed with a grade B. I can do Maths. As an aside the day did the exam I was due to run sound at a dress rehearsal for a play called Proof which is all about a Maths professor and his equally talented Daughter. The irony of this was not lost on me.
Finally I am off to be a full time student 32 years after I left school. I want children to be inspired to continue their education after school while they are still young enough to really gain from it, but to still realise that you never really finish learning and that avenues are not always closed completely to you. I want them to have a "can do" attitude to everything they do, even the stuff they find hard. If my experience can show that it is possible to complete a maths GSCE style exam in half the recommended time and without following a prescribed route, 9 years after studying the subject seriously, then good revision will help them to succeed too.
