Daisy's degree, and it's a big one

She had aways been contemplating uni, and when South Leeds High School became the latest victim in both UK governments' scams to privatise education, so after ten pretty happy years at Merlyn and then at the merged South Leeds, Daisy applied to Leeds to do her degree in Theatre and Performance Studies.

Primary and Middle schools had nurtured her after a very early dyselxia diagnosis [visiting academic doing research at Brudenell Primary School], but high school was not really interested and she fled with a decent clutch of A to Cs which thankfully included Maths [without which apparently your adult life can't begin] down to the Wakefield College via a stint as TA at Royal Park.

Anyway to cut a long story, this is how me, Joe and Daisy came to be drinking sparkling white or red before even the Archers had been on! Daisy and Rebecca nearly missed their own ceremony.

People say you must be very proud, and of course I am, but also angry, angry that our education system which had been heading towards the care of the indivual, forces teachers to concentrate instead on the astract concept of average grades achieved, and as for those children who open books or computer screens only to see dots swimming about, well, what use are they to the school's survival?


When I myself went to Uni I ended up taking the wrong subject, and ended up with a degree in Russian, in a language I couldn't really speak. So when I got honours [a 2 2] I was totally relieved, because I never doubted my own academic ability.

But, Debs, when Daisy, exactly twenty years after her last high school report told her she should do something about her spelling, walked onto the stage of the Geat Hall, Leeds University to collect her first class honours degree certificate, the word, proud, was far too small a word for how I felt.