Our story
Turning paininto purpose
Fairer Exams began with one child missing out by a few marks.
My son worked hard. His school reports were strong. He cared.
But he missed his GCSE English and maths passes by the smallest of margins.
One mark in maths.
Two marks in English.
Those marks meant he could not move on to the Level 3 course he wanted to do at college.
That moment changed how I saw the whole system.
The statistics I wish I had known
The statistics I wish I had known
When my son had to resit, I started researching how many young people actually pass GCSE English and maths the second time around. I could not believe how low the resit pass rate was.
Then I looked at how many young people achieve grade 4 or above in both English and maths in the first place, and discovered that around 1 in 3 do not.
Then I looked at who was most likely to miss out, and found out that only around 3 in 10 pupils with SEN achieve grade 4 or above in English and maths.
No one had ever told me that. Not once.
If I had known earlier that the statistics were stacked against my son this badly, I would have understood his journey differently. Instead, we kept going, believing that because he had only missed out by a couple of marks, surely next time he would pass.
But he didn’t.
When everything got harder
His confidence collapsed. He developed emotionally based school avoidance, and for a long time he refused to go to college or school.
It was a horrendously dark time.
I remember sitting in the school car park crying, and knowing I was not the only parent doing the same.
In the middle of that, I started writing my TEDx talk.
At first, it gave me something positive to do with all the frustration and helplessness I was feeling. But the more I researched, the more I felt like I had uncovered something hiding in plain sight.
When I told people outside the education system what I was speaking about, they were shocked by the statistics.
How could so many young people be missing the gateway grade every year, and yet so many families only find out how serious the problem is once their own child is caught in it?
Once I knew the numbers, I could not unknow them.
The discovery that changed the solution
As I researched the talk, I discovered Functional Skills.
Functional Skills are practical English and maths qualifications. At Level 2, they are widely treated as equivalent to a GCSE grade 4/C for many purposes, but they assess the skills in a more applied, real-world way.
The pass rates were far higher than GCSE resits.
I could not understand why I had never been clearly told about them, despite being heavily involved in my child’s education. I also could not understand why, if this more applied format helps so many learners succeed, it is still hidden behind GCSE failure, still carries stigma, and is not accepted by every university, employer or training route.
That was the moment the solution became clear.
Why are we not integrating the Functional Skills approach into foundation GCSE English and maths?
