The first time I heard of a crammer school I assumed it was a 16th-century foundation by Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, where boys walked about the cloisters in long cloaks with copies of the Book of Common Prayer stuffed under their arms.
I guess we didn’t take revision quite so seriously in my day. In fact I know we didn’t. Revision was something you did in the week before your exams, and if you had to do it in public you tended to hide your book of calculus inside a copy of Smash Hits.
It was brought home to me just how much things have changed since the 1980s when I started discussing Easter holiday plans with the family, and noticed my son was shaking his head. There was no way he was going on holiday at Easter. He had to spend the time revising. What, not even ski in the mornings and turn to your books in the afternoons? No. Holidays are for the summer, I was told, they are not for indulging in when GCSEs are on the horizon. Whether you are studying mechanics of bodies or 17th-century religion and politics, it seems, the fashionable thing if you are 16 is to spend the entire spring break with your nose in your books, if not signing up for a dedicated revision course.
Colleges seem to be springing up all over the place. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a Thomas Cranmer Crammer School whose sole function is to bone up religious studies students on the Book of Common Prayer. I am not sure whether it is a good or a bad thing, the growing seriousness of revision. It is reassuring to see that pupils no longer regard studying as a shameful secret — and it does make you question the standard knee-jerk response to rising exam grades, that it must be because the exams are getting easier.
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