They might not admit it and most certainly would not want to see it written down in black and white, in so many words, on The Sunday Times of Malta, but here goes: my parents were quite blasé about my education.

They probably didn’t realise it then. Today, I dare say, they know better. Grandparenting does wonders for renewing one’s perspective on so many things.

Admittedly, I must have driven them crazy with my obsession with overachieving and my irrational, remote and largely inconceivable fear of ‘supplementaries’ – modern-day re-sits. Had I been indifferent, then they might have had to worry.

But luckily for them, my passion for passing examinations happened to fall within the socially accepted and approved definition of what constituted ‘an education’.

I’m not sure they knew what was going on. Of course, they had a very good idea about the bigger picture – that I wanted to continue studying, go to Sixth Form and then on to University.

But I was left to engineer the specifics of my education singlehandedly. Applications, deadlines, private lessons, options, choices, schools, courses, gap years – the works.

I was never pushed, probed, badgered or reminded. Everything fell on my lap. I’d fill up forms, have them delivered and make it my business to find out the how, where, when. I even drove myself to all my A levels, which is how I wound up missing the last paper of my French A level.

I’d misread the time on the timetable slip, which was invariably printed in minuscule, with an almost indistinguishable am or a pm to indicate the examination time.

Had I lived in another household, the timetable might have been sellotaped to the refrigerator and my mother would have been reciting novenas, lighting candles to Our Lady Help of Christians, wanting to make sure I knew all my verb conjugations. Ours was not that sort of household. I had my aunt and uncle for that sort of thing.

My parents were only ever interested in the end result – in whether I had passed, and if so, whether my grades were sufficient to get me where I wanted. And when that happened, there was never any fanfare or celebration.

They tended to play these things down – as far as I knew or could tell, anyway. And not just because it would have sounded ostentatious or because they weren’t proud. They were. It simply wasn’t a part of who they were.

Now that I’m a parent, I can’t imagine leaving my son to his own devices in the way my parents did. And although I resent the idea of extreme and stifling pressure to succeed, I recognise my son for the student he is – one who clearly needs an abundance of parental guidance.

Perhaps I haven’t interfered with his home and school work as much as I could or should have. Still, I know that when the time comes, when push comes to shove and it matters, I’ll be there with bells on.

I’ll succumb to pressure and the educational grind and get acquainted with all the examination hotspots; I’ll see to it that application forms are filled out in duplicate and photocopied; I’ll drive him there and back, make sure he gets there on time, quiz him before and after. I’ll be that mother.

And yet, today, I find myself hugely mistrusting and largely sceptical of an educational system I once idolised and adulated. I realise that you can’t beat the system – that Ordinary and, to a larger degree, Advanced levels, still hold the key to the sixth form of your choice, to the university course and hopefully the career you want to pursue.

Still, as a person who has been through the educational mill unflinchingly and ‘successfully’, I have massive reservations about a system which is still predicated on academic ability and which continues to put everyone in the same basket. It is a system which does not cater for diversity or distinctiveness, where intelligence is simply straitjacketed.

Students are still being subjected to an almost identical and unchanged educational hierarchy and curriculum to the one that was being churned out 40 years ago and even longer than that.

Education is still nothing more than a protracted process of passing examinations and getting into university. Now I have seen people change career paths and get jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with what they studied at university.

I have marvelled at the financial and other successes of some of my peers who were labelled and perceived ‘slow learners’ at school and who never graduated.

Education is still nothing more than a protracted process of passing examinations and getting into university

And I have seen the most academically brilliant people who always got the grades they wanted abandon their careers and slowly fade away.

I can certainly vouch for the fact that people peak and mature at different ages; that people’s interests change; that what you thought you desperately wanted to do at 15 is not necessarily what you will want to do at the age of 20, 25 or 40.

Education should not just be about racking up degrees. That doesn’t work for everyone. Above all, education should be explorative – a process whereby youngsters are urged to discover what it is they love and then be provided with the tools, courage, confidence and support to do that – whether its mathematics, dance, photography or cheffing. It should be about putting creativity on a par with literacy and numeracy.

Although education is meant to help people reach their potential, I find the system often educates people out of their potential and creativity. In many ways the rat race can be blinding and, students, I fear, often get carried away by external pressures without pausing to reflect on what they really want out of life.

So, to those of you who may not have got the grades you wanted and who may think that this spells the end of their world – it doesn’t.

Sometimes disappointment and failure give way to the most useful examination of them all – self-examination and analysis.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com