Students don't know how lucky they are AMID all the anguish, joy and disappointment of this year's General Certificate of Education results, it will probably be only my generation that remembers it was exactly 50 years ago that the tests were introduced (already)!

Yes, it was in 1951 that the exams, so dreaded by generations of students, were handed out for the first time.

And yet they should not be dreaded at all. Generally speaking, they have been responsible for helping our most able pupils to achieve their full potential, although, as always, there will be exceptions.

If you don't believe that, you should look hard at what GCEs replaced. It was known as the School Certificate, open mainly to pupils of grammar schools, private schools, and a few of the brighter scholars in secondary technical schools.

If pupils had to face that hurdle today they really would face the 16+ test with trepidation. And far fewer would succeed or go on to worthwhile careers.

I have first hand experience of this. In the year the General Certificate of Education was introduced, an accident of birth sealed your fate. In my form alone, those born before a certain date were forced to sit the School Certificate.

Those, like me, who were born later, were to be the guinea pigs for the first ever GCE O-level exams (later combined with the Certificate of Secondary Education, and then replaced by GCSEs).

If you took the School Cert you sat at least eight subjects. And you had to pass all eight. If you took the GCE you got grades. There were no "failures" at first, only lower grades which were not regarded as passes.

My pal in the form was brighter than me. He was extremely clever. Effortlessly clever. He was also older. He had to take the School Certificate examination and was unlucky to fail only one out of the eight subjects. He was allowed to retake the exam and passed the failed subject only to crash in one already passed. He actually passed 14 ver tough exam papers. But, bright as he was, my pal left grammar school with nothing. I left with a General Certificate of Education passed in only five subjects. I became a trainee journalist because I had a "qualification." He became a cotton weaver.

Talk about a waste! I have always felt bitter about a system that could do that to my pal. Change was certainly needed.

I have written this to show today's GCSE scholars how fortunate they are to have such an examination. And I have a further message of cheer for those why may not have passed the subjects they wanted.

Ambition and determination can count for a lot, so don't give up. I am about to reveal something I have never before admitted to any one because it doesn't matter any more. I became the deputy editor of a newspaper -- but I failed every English exam I ever took.

Well, at least I have that in common with one of our greatest orators, Sir Winston Churchill.