A credit to the school, or could do better?

3 September 2014

Educating the East End starts this week, and to mark this occasion we have asked some familiar Channel 4 faces to give us a sneaky peak at their own school reports.

Let’s start with Channel 4 Racing’s Nick Luck. You can tell he had an expensive education, because the teachers actually bothered to write lengthy (and rather erudite) reports, as opposed to the “Timmy has done well this year” reports most of us consider standard. Sometimes they’d even actually write Timmy, regardless of your name.

Not that his time at Harrow seems to have been particularly fruitful, if his history report is anything to go by.

“This is not the occasion to lament Nick's sins of omission: it is all too late and too much blood has flown under the bridge. He has chosen a path: I hope it leads him to whatever he wishes for himself. I must take my share of the blame for failing to arouse the slightest self-pride in his work or in himself as an intellectual. Let us hope that he has salvaged something from the wreckage.” Genius!

Leon, from Gogglebox, seems to have been slightly more inclined towards history: “Leon works hard at subjects he enjoys, particularly history. He represents the school for Football and Cricket. He lacks concentration and could work harder.” Fine, but where are the references to blood flowing under the bridge?

Leon’s wife, June, was told that she “achieves very good results in art subjects but needs to work harder in science subjects. An active member of the music society. Chats too much in class.”

Still with Gogglebox, Stephen (of Stephen and Chris) “considered himself the entertainer of the class,” although his flamboyant tendencies led to him being “a good Mary in the Nativity play.”

Most reports seem to criticise pupils for not paying enough attention in class. Not so with James Rhodes’ piano teacher, who somehow seemed to be having a go at James for being too eager to learn:

'If enthusiasm equalled talent, James would already rival the best pianist in the world'.

Jamie Oliver recalls a less than salubrious school performance. “My school reports said: ‘Nice lad, needs to try, not particularly academic’. They got so bad in the fourth and fifth year that I had to steal them and write them all myself. I got all my mates to write them with different coloured pens. And my mum and dad were like ‘Well done Jamie, B+, that’s great!’ And then when the exams came they were all fails apart from art and geology.” Clearly there was a lack of nutrition in the school meals.

Sometimes the reports correspond exactly with someone’s public image. The ever-chirpy presenter Kate Quilton was given this report: “Katie always works conscientiously and with enthusiasm. She has maintained an excellent standard of presentation and content. But she needs to take care that her drawings and diagrams are accurate and coloured realistically. Not every sky has a rainbow.”

Jessica Knappet’s comic persona in Drifters, as a walking disaster zone, seems to have been more than a little autobiographical. 'Jessica has the ability to get things spectacularly wrong’.

But who was given this stunner of a report at the end of the academic year?

‘He sets himself low standards which he fails to achieve’

None other than the face of news and current affairs on Channel 4, and one of the most respected broadcasters in the country, Jon Snow.

Away from Channel 4, here are a few particularly fine examples of the report-writer’s art:

"The boy is every inch a fool, but luckily for him he's not very tall."

Norman Wisdom’s report from an army training programme.

 

In his headmaster's report, Richard Briers was told: “It would seem that Briers thinks he is running the school and not me. If this attitude persists, one of us will have to leave.”

 

Journalist and humourist Alan Coren did not, fortunately, go on to become a physicist after being told: “Coren's grasp of dynamics is truly astonishing. Had he lived in an earlier aeon, I have little doubt that the wheel would now be square.”

 

And finally, politician David Owen’s former headmaster was particularly scathing: “If I had to select an expedition to the South Pole he would be the first person I would choose. But I would make sure that he was not on the return journey!”

 

Fortunately, teachers seem to be slightly more sensitive these days. Check out Educating the East End on Thursday nights at 9pm to see what we mean.