As the primary schools go back, it’s the older kids who suffer

It now appears that school’s out till after the summer for pretty much all secondary pupils. The loudest cries, an equal mix of exaltation and despair, come from those who were due to sit GCSE and A-l-evel exams this term: groups now split between delight at unstructured months of leisure time and anxiety that lackadaisical efforts in mock exams won’t prove enough to secure them the required grades.

Yet my sympathies in this stalemate lie with those in Year 12, or the lower-sixth, the sandwich year between the two public exam groups. The Prime Minister has said that from 15 June, these 16- and 17-year-olds will be allowed ‘some contact’ with their teachers, but with just one quarter of the usual class permitted to be present at any one time.

I am interested in the fate of this particular year group for a very simple reason: my lower-sixth year, and the inspirational broadening of horizons that it offered me, constituted the three most formative terms that I experienced in all my years of education.