Depending on your current age, your recollections of your Head Teacher’s final end of year speech may be crystal clear or a little hazy. Their ability to deliver anything meaningful will, of course, have played a part in your ability to remember the details, but I wonder what we’d each say if we had the opportunity. I left school in 1978: as my headmaster was a man who achieved a certain notoriety for his ability to speak for up to an hour while saying almost nothing, I have no memory of his presumably rousing words of hope and inspiration.

Were I to be 18 again now, and paying more attention, what might I hope to hear? A sprinkling of verbal hope might be just the thing to help the pill go down, given the latest news headlines. Take your pick from: current youth (un)employment figures; surveys showing that my generation might be the first since either WWII or 1900 (take your pick of survey: customer choice now extends as far as grounds for pessimism); a Saga survey showing a third of over 50s are financially supporting their own adult children, or the indebtedness I might accrue if I opt to better myself with a degree. Knowing that my school had previously produced not just ambassadors to Qatar and Paraguay, but a Lib Dem MP and Keira Knightley might have lifted my spirits, although the most successful (Knightley) dropped out. Her fame and wealth had come as an alternative to education, rather than as a consequence.

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