Written by Margaret Simpson. Tx 27th February 1979
The end of year exams are fast approaching and Susi’s feeling the strain. Miss Summers later tells her that the first year exams aren’t terribly important, but Susi’s mother is putting considerable pressure on her.
Next year she’ll be in the top set in French and English, but in a lower set in Maths. This comes as a disappointment to her (although it’s clear that it’ll be more of a disappointment to her mother). Miss Summers is able to explain that it’s no disgrace to be in a lower set in some subjects, it simply means that she’s not quite as good at Maths as she is in other subjects. Therefore it’s better that she’s placed in a set with others of a similar ability, rather than struggle along in a higher set.
There’s a clear divide made between Mrs McMahon and Penny’s mother, Mrs Lewis. Mrs McMahon never seems to give her daughter any encouragement at all and also tells her that she’ll be voting to keep school uniform in the upcoming referendum. Mrs Lewis is a much more relaxed character (for example, she’s quite happy to vote for the abolition of uniform). The juxtaposition between the two mothers makes a telling point – if Susi didn’t feel her mother’s constant disapproval thenno doubt she’d be a much happier person.
Mr McMahon (Bill Treacher) is more supportive, telling Susi she can only do her best, although he’s rather distant, which seems to make it clear that Mrs McMahon is the driving force of the family. This is Mr McMahon’s only appearance and it does come as a slight shock to see a rather well-spoken turn from Treacher (later to become very familiar thanks to his decade or so as Arthur Fowler in Eastenders).
Elsewhere, Tucker finds an exam paper which he’s convinced is the one they’re about to sit. We’ll revisit this plot-line in later years when Pogo tries to make a profit by selling questions from a paper he found. Here, Tucker doesn’t attempt any such free enterprise – he’s happy to share for free – but it doesn’t take a mind-reader to work out that it’s clearly not going to end well. Mr Mitchell’s reluctance to act, although he knows that something’s going on, makes it plain that whatever Tucker’s found, it’s not that year’s paper.
This is made quite obvious when none of the questions come up in the paper they take – resulting in poor Tucker suffering attacks from all of his angry classmates!
The referendum to make school uniform optional votes in favour of the proposal by a narrow majority, to the delight of many.
Archive Television Musings 
I found this episode quite moving and also a good look at how what were then recent changes in schools had not filtered through to all expectations. Although presented through the eyes of a child under heavy pressure and without terms that would be meaningless to their school experience, there’s a clear element of the aftershocks of the abolition of the Tripartite System of grammar schools, secondary moderns and technical schools underpinning some of the expectations here. The McMahons seem to be the sort of parents who were not happy with comprehensivisation but this process was largely complete by the late 1970s and standalone grammar schools only survived in a few areas. The talk of exams to get into other schools, boarding schools and the like suggests that their only real alternative is a private school and probably a scholarship to cover the fees – but those have rarely been about widening participation and are instead treated as prizes. And so you have parents with expectations based on an exam production line rather than on what’s best for their daughter’s development.
And because of the staggered way the grammars were phased out some of the subject requirements shifted as well but not all at the same time. Needing Latin to get into at least some universities is a clear hangover from the grammars but it’s a subject that was largely ditched when ex grammars merged with ex secondary moderns (in part because there were insufficient teachers but also because it’s a subject that frankly all too often only taught to pass exams to get into institutions that only teach it because everyone arrives having been taught it!) or only taught to limited groups due to teacher availability.
No child aged 11/12 should be worrying about what subjects they will need to get into university or panicking that how they perform on one day (are they really taking all the exams in all subjects in a single day?!) is going to chart the whole course of their life.That is far too early to be making such decisions. And how much of that was the reason for comprehensives in the first place?
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There’s several notable firsts in this episode. Following the vote to abolish school uniform later on in the episode (which seems to come in with surprisingly immediate effect – one might have thought it would at least have been implemented at the start of the next school term), we see Tucker in his iconic leather jacket for the first time, something which will become synonymous with the character from this point onwards in the series (including later spin-off ‘Tucker’s Luck’ and his two later return appearances in GH).
Secondly, it is the first time we see a black teacher at Grange Hill – French Mrs. Dunlop, played by Cleo Sylvestre – who will go on to play a couple of other minor GH roles later, and who also has several other interesting “firsts” to her name, also being the first black woman ever to play a leading role at the National Theatre in London, and also the first woman to record with The Rolling Stones). Although this only be a one-off appearance of the character, Series 3-4 would see a more prominent black female teacher, with Miss Peterson (Cheryl Branker), Mr. Mitchell’s replacement as the form tutor of G1.
…Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, it’s the first time we hear of Penny Lewis’ love of horse riding! The love of which would later have the character suffering (unseen) terrible fall from her horse prior to the start of Series Four, a fall so very terrible that it somehow resulted in her being completely absent for the next two years of school, her character effectively being replaced by Pamela Cartwright (Rene Alperstein), although she was well enough to return for the big school concert towards the end of Series 5! Considering how Pamela would go on to become an unrequited love for Tucker, we can but imagine, had there not been the ol’ character replacement switcheroo, it would have been Penny in place of Pamela who would become the object of Tucker’s affections.
Penny being all dressed up in horse riding gear, seen mid-episode, highlights the contrast between her home life – easy going, free to do what she wants and expresses herself (and we might also suspect, slightly privileged) – and that of best friend Susi, the main focus of this episode.
We’ve had a brief hint of it a few episodes back, but here we see Susi’s parents, in particularly her mother, in full effect. Her Dad (Bill “Eastenders” Treacher, in the character’s only appearance and, at this stage of the series, a fairly rare appearance of a pupil’s father) is vaguely more reasonable, but it is clear Susi’s mother wears the trousers in the household. She treats Susi ridiculously over strictly, seldom show her any direct encouragement, decide things on her behalf, and – albeit unintentionally – often put her down; forever comparing Susi to how well Susi’s (unseen) brother was doing at that age. Although we see little evidence of it, we can well imagine she had henpecked Susi’s father and worn him down as well. It’s such a shame, as Susi is such a nice young girl – kind and intelligent and not doing badly at all at school.
I can well relate to some of the themes of this episode, as my own mother too was quite overbearing and similarly unintentionally quite unkind at times, and young Linda Slater gives a good performance as the sad, downtrodden Susi in this episode – which also serves as Susi’s first solo dedicated storyline – she has been Penny’s sidekick for most of Series Two, and Penny and herself were lost in the forest in the previous two episodes, but in terms of a “character spotlight” storyline, this is her first. She is a likeable character, and it’s easy to see why she would feature a lot over the next few series.
Miss Summers, on the other hand, is far more open minded about the upcoming tests, which in reality are little more than to act as a monitor on how well each pupil is doing in different classes, in order to help sort them into relevant classes for the next school year. Although we do get to see Miss Summers next episode, the final of Series Two, she doesn’t get much to do there, so in a way, Episode Seventeen acts as the final good showcase episode for the character. It’s a shame Philomena McDonagh didn’t return for Series Three, as Miss Summers is one of my favourite early teachers, and in my opinion she is one of the many strengths to this excellent second series.
And there’s also the b-plot, of Tucker and Benny believing they’ve found the answers to the upcoming test in Mitch’s desk drawer… the outcome of “it was the wrong paper” is fairly predictable from the off, but it matters little, as watching Tucker in action, in one of his inevitably doomed schemes, is always good value.
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