> SPEECH BY FRANCES CLARK

Good evening, everyone.
 
Speaking on behalf of others is never easy, and I think my situation's made significantly harder by the fact that I don't know most of the individuals who I hopefully will represent accurately. But I'll try.
 
The Cambridge International Examination system has, for me, been satisfactory and it has obviously rewarded me for my time within it. I can see why, in a time of perceived uncertainty, many schools chose to offer CIE. Exams do work in forcing a person to think, and in rewarding different levels of ability and knowledge.
 
Exams are also capable of being very unpleasant at the time. I never feel quite as alone as at the moment when I am told to turn over or open an exam paper. Then, I know I am entirely on my own, and that no one can help me anymore. It's initially a terrifying feeling, and it made me freeze up completely for the first minutes of my fifth form English exam. I remember cursing the idea of total external assessment. What a vile, pointless, atavistic thing it is! I said to myself. But after silently declaring this (silently, I should stress) I was still seated at the desk, with the thing staring at me. And so I reassembled my brain; I accepted my situation. After two years, I even started to enjoy the exams of the subjects I love. Sitting exams did teach me something worthwhile: it taught me to overcome fear. I have learned to cope, to trust myself, and to be eloquent and clear when I am afraid.
 
Examinations are, however, only part of an education. The year leading up to them is their reason for being and is obviously the central part of schooling. The school year itself is what is remembered years later, when the exam paper has disappeared. I will with affection remember my teachers, my classmates, my friends, and what I learned.
 
All my teachers taught me to think. One way of thinking which I take with me from secondary school allows me to appreciate poetry on my own. My education has therefore indirectly given me the only poem which I know about examinations, not an entirely positive one, by Albert Wendt. In his poem Exam Time, New Zealand, Wendt’s persona watches a room full of students and, in true anti-establishment style, says that here
 
            "There are only exams to sit;
            The real questions remain unanswered."
 
I think he is right. But having tried my hand at some smaller ideas in CIE and Scholarship exams, now I can begin to think about "real questions". I am glad that I now know how to ask myself things which can never be answered, and to have the courage to admit to ignorance.

I chose a school which uses the CIE system. But more importantly, I chose a school which has exceptional teachers, each of whom is an extraordinary individual for what they do: not only do they teach to a very high level, they genuinely care about their students. As I said, I am wary of speaking for others, but I am confident that for each prize tonight and for everyone who feels that they have achieved in the Cambridge system, there are extraordinary teachers who encouraged the thinking, creativity, knowledge and skill which Cambridge markers have so rightly recognized. There are also certainly families and friends, like my own, who quietly saw that these successes could come to pass. I respect these people greatly, as I do those students who are tonight being honoured.
 
And so, thank you to teachers, families, friends, principals, to CIE officials, and to the Association of Cambridge Schools in New Zealand. And Congratulations to tonight's prize-winners! Your achievements are more than worthy of recognition and praise. Well done.

Thank you for your time, everyone. Good evening.

Frances Clark, ACG Senior College.
February 2008