At least they gave an opinion. My grandsons school at one point gave almost every one a report suggesting the were average at everything so as to not run anyone down, or to make them seem better than the others. After the protests they have gone back to the truth, or near it, but will still not place children in order of ability.
Believe it or not, I was a grammar school boy, expected to go to Oxford, not Aldershot, or at the very least Sandhurst. But the school I went to was extremely hot on sports, and incredibly competitive. It didnt do us any harm to compete and rather than cause the weaker ones a problem, they tended to do better in their careers and career choices.
When my girls were at school, competitive sport was frowned on and they brought out that ten step rubbish, where you compete against yourself. I always said to their teachers that the very nature of life is competitive and this isnt preparing them for it. They tended to agree but of course their hands were tied by the lentil munching tree hugging brigade that seem to wheedle their way in everywhere.
And that period of spell it how you say it used to drive me crazy. I always told the girls to get the grammar, punctuation and spelling right, as it shines out on an application form. They used to tell me everyone of their generation does it that way. I used to tell them their application forms were probably being scrutinised by my generation.
Recently too, we acquired a book written by one of my contemporaries, but a year before mine, and my wife, who had heard my tales of the brutality inflicted on us by the priests, realised I hadnt been exagerating, rather understating the period, and was stunned and upset by what she read concerning the visciousness of the punishments meted out. Nowadays, they would get a prison sentence for what they did to us. It was just pure physical brutality with canes and straps, including the whalebone strap and one even had a strap with two tails that he had made. Six on each hand for untidy writing was one of theirs and this was in the seventies. My mates that went to comprehensive schools never believed what we went through. My hatred of priests knows no bounds. I left school at 16 and joined the army at 17, which in turn led me to never return to my home area, and was perhaps for the best as I never met any of them again.