Reflections on the English Maturita 2021 – part one

It’s been a long time since I wrote on this blog. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to write about, but the effort of looking at the screen (again!) after weeks of online lessons was a click too far. However, the creative writing juice is flowing again, so here we go…

I will probably work my way backwards – a bit like the film ‘Memento’ :) 

The Maturita exams finished last week. Amazingly, for the first time in a very long time (indeed, I’m not even sure if it’s happened before!), no one failed in ANY subject! Of course, this needs to be weighed with the fact that the Czech Literature oral exam was not compulsory, and also the Language State Exams – but this shouldn’t detract from what has been an exceptional performance by our students. Considering the amount of doubt & fear engendered by the Media & the Government as to the overall capability & quality of online teaching provided by teachers & endured by students, there were concerns among the public (not with us, I assure you!) that we would not be up to the job. Our results are a resounding poke in the eye & rebuttal to that suggestion! I will only comment on the English Exam results, but for the statisticians among you, here are the bare facts:

93 students did the English oral exams

81 got ‘1’

7 got ‘2’

5 got ‘3’

Let that soak in for a minute. 87% of the students got the best mark possible. No one worse than a ‘3’. And lest you think we made it easy for them, we most certainly did not. Over the years, we have had some outstanding students at this school, in all subjects – and especially from an English perspective. Many of them are still memorable to me even now, after 14 years of teaching here. But this year has been unique in many different ways. Considering that this year’s students have had the Coronavirus situation to deal with over the past year & more, involving a huge amount of online teaching, which hasn’t suited everyone, I think they have done amazingly well.

As an English speaker, I have been hugely impressed, not only with the quality of English, but also the range of themes and creativity (& sometimes humour) shown in their talks. It has not been a duty to listen to them and give a mark, but often it has been a real pleasure & a stimulating experience. Selfishly, this is a great reward after the trials of online teaching! One worth waiting for. I sometimes think I have the best job that these is…

What I’ve given you here is the basic skeleton of the English Maturita – in the next couple of blogs I will put some flesh to these bones & share some of my personal joys, but also some of the funny mistakes which showed up (including a couple of old favourites!).