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SINCE 1819
SINCE 1819
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Derek Skipper has spoken of his delight after becoming the oldest person in Britain to ever pass a GCSE exam at the incredible age of 92.
He sat the exam with ten mature students and a gaggle of 16 year olds after studying for a maths GCSE with a free adult education course run by The Cam Academy Trust out of Comberton Village College and funded by Cambridgeshire Skills.
He was able to study the lessons over Zoom and discovered that maths exams have changed considerably since he sat his school certificate in 1946.
Derek received his results today (Thursday, August 25) and found he had passed with flying colours at a grade 5. The grade is the highest available on the foundation paper, and he wishes he could have taken the higher paper but it was not an option on the Adult Education programme.
Derek, of Orwell, said: “Oh I was delighted, it would have been very embarrassing if I had failed after receiving all this attention. I just took the course to keep my brain working a little bit. “Something came through the door from Comberton Village College to say here’s a free course to do maths. It cost me nothing and I had a good instructor and the college was very supportive. I really enjoyed it.
“I learned something new because when I took my exam in 1946 they didn’t have anything like Venn diagrams. I had to learn a lot of new things and of course, it was on Zoom, so I had to learn how to use that. There was also a calculator involved and modern calculators are just incredibly complicated.”
He added that sitting the exam was an unusual experience: “It was interesting because we were sitting with all the16 year olds, but there were about 10 mature students and the college looked after us very well. They gave us special seats and once the exam started the time flew past. The examiner said: ‘Your time starts now’. And then in no time at all it was ‘Pack up your papers,’. An hour and a half and never disappeared so quickly.”
Derek claims not to have suffered any nerves while sitting the exam but was a little worried about the results. He said: “I wasn’t nervous when it started off because I placed no importance on it. But since things have gotten a bit hectic and the news about me has got round the world, I was really nervous about getting the right results. So I was lucky I got a good result and I’m quite happy with it.”