trennels | Patrick's education

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peter

Patrick's education

Trying to write a fic inspired by some of the recent AO3 additions and a nitpicking community post that came up shortly after. I've re-read Peter's Room and AT, but can't find my copy of RAH.

Am I right that in RAH, Patrick has been dragged to interview at Broomhill and tutors have been suggested, but nothing is confirmed other than the plan to sit his O-levels that June, which will be the same time as Ginty?
Will he still be 16, or turned 17 by then?

Prior to that, he was at his hated London day school from some time after Falconer's Lure to December in Attic Term, so is that one year and a term, or two? I think it's two and a term, so he would have been just turned fourteen and entering third year mid-year? (UIV, as Kingscote and my school would have it)

Presumably he was at a boarding school before that? Would he have been at a prep and then a Catholic boarding school for one year age 13?

Meanwhile, Dartmouth for Peter has the problem of not existing by RAH - is there any mention of Peter doing O-levels there? I'd like to think they push him towards science and practical qualifications and generally not being on their boats, just designing them Somewhere Else. I'm assuming he's then one year behind Ginty and one ahead of the twins, education-wise.

I don't recall either of their birthdays, but have an impression Peter's is spring and Patrick's summer - anyone know?

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He didn't go to school at all for two years because of the accident he had on the cliffs.

I think he's two years older than Nicola, and sic months older than Ginty. 15 during FL, and 16 during Attic Term. There's definitely only one year between the end of FL and the beginning of Attic Term. I'm not sure when his birthday is offhand, but probably early summer, so he would be 16 nearly 17 if he did his O levels in the summer. That suggests he might have been put back a year when he started at his London school.

Thank you - I typed one year between FL and AT, then two, then one...
AT refers to him being put back a year at the London school, but I hadn't realised it was two years off school from the cliff accident.

So then he's just turned 15 in FL, had two years off school so the accident would have been just after turning 13, which would mean presumably missing third year completely and finishing a prep school elsewhere. Which would mean having never been to a senior boarding school - unless the matey establishment in London takes boarders as well as day boys? Do we know any more about it other than from AT?

Will have to read FL and RAH again now (oh the hardship).

Am I right that in RAH, Patrick has been dragged to interview at Broomhill and tutors have been suggested, but nothing is confirmed other than the plan to sit his O-levels that June, which will be the same time as Ginty?

It hasn't been confirmed in RAH whether Patrick's Maths O Level paper will be accepted by the exam board (or if it is, whether he has passed). Broomhill will take him if he's passed; if not the plan is to send him to a crammer to retake it.

I can't recall Peter's O Levels ever being mentioned. According to Wikepedia, Dartmouth raised its leaving age to 16 in 1948, which was 3 years before O level exams replaced the former 'school certificate' so given that a universe in which anyone would take O Levels at Dartmouth is entirely hypothetical, I would say for fic purposes you have free rein to create it as you wish!

Thank you. If Broomhill accept him, would he be embarking on A-levels early - presumably that was the system at the old place, do O-levels in December so Oxbridge Fourth Term exam entrance was in fact two years later and thus have kids an advantage. Or would he be doing other O-levels at Broomhill that academic year?

It was Dartmouth raising its entry age to 16, so Peter shouldn't be there even in canon, that I was thinking of. I figure the Marlowverse could have ended up with a version where the now-under-age pupils attend essentially a boarding school where Cadets is taken extra-seriously.

The relevant bits in RAH are -

Nicola: You mean he's taking you?
Patrick: Well - that's not settled. If I've passed O-level Maths yes - on condition I junk the idea of A-level English and History [because the Broomhill head sees these as soft options]
Nicola: Blimey! What would you take instead?
Patrick: Languages? French and Italian, perhaps? [...]
Nicola: And suppose you haven't passed Maths?
Patrick: Then I have to take it again, but not at Broomhil - a crammer's or a tutor [to prove he has guts]

Patrick then points out that if he fails Maths on the second attempt, Broomhill is out & he would have a much better chance of being allowed to do English and History studying at home (which he said in a previous conversation he would ideally like to do). It's noted that Nicola takes it for granted he wouldn't deliberately fail in order to get what he wants. Patrick concludes that if he must go to another school, Broomhill "sounds more entertaining than most. I reckon I'd just about survive two years"

So yes, he can only go there if he already has his full complement of O-levels, to do A-levels in subjects approved by the Head.

Sorrow, I meant to say 'entry' rather than 'leaving' re. Dartmouth - I was typing just after coming back from a v. stressful day at work!

Edited 2015-09-26 17:27 (UTC)

Not having any of the books to hand and not having read RAH for a very long time, I can't comment on the content of the books. However, as Ma missed the top year of junior school (passed her 11+ a year early and went to grammar school at 10) she was too young to take O levels in 1951 (you had to be 16). She then took 3 O levels in LVIth and took her remaining 4 subjects as A levels in UVIth. In those days, you only took things at O level that you weren't carrying on to A level. But English & Maths plus a language were a necessity for university entrance. So if Patrick wasn't going to do A level Maths, he would have had to have passed his O level to get to university, so any school would have insisted on it if he was going to do Arts subjects at A level.

I got the impression from AT that he was taking the November exams because he was already older than he should be, ie had been 16 in the previous year, so by the following school year, he would be 17. Ginty makes a comment about the only people at Kingscote who do November exams are the dim people who failed in UV (and, by implication need retakes for university purposes).

AT says all Patrick's school does the November sitting - "it's only your odd place does them this term". Which is plausible.
I'd forgotten maths was a prerequisite for all degrees - it was just 5 subjects by the time I did A-level, which meant a friend whose comp had experimented with top set doing Eng and Maths two years early refused to do any more GCSEs on the grounds they were boring, did Maths, Further Maths and Physics A-level, but also had to do another GCSE to make up his five subjects. So he also turned 16 a few months after starting at Cambridge and was one of the reasons they now won't take under-17s.

not sure about the O levels at 16 thing. My mother was young for her year- her birthday is 27th Sept and she started at Grammar School just before her 11th birthday and took School Cert at16, but could not leave that term as she was not old enough so had to go back in the Sept for a term even though she did not want (or was not allowed) to do A levels. Though as the school leaving ages was 15 I can't quite figure this, now, thinking about it! Must ask her.

Having just moved house my AFs are for the first time all together on a shelf in chronological order and very accessible for quotation purposes!

AT - Ginty reassures Patrick that it couldn't be shaming to fail his "levels" having missed two years of school -

P: "... Besides, falling off cliffs isn't any sort of excuse by now. Not when I'm taking Levels a year late as it is."
G: "Don't they work you hard! Only the terribly bright people take them at fifteen at our place unless their parents insist."
P: "And you're not and your parents didn't?"

[And so on to the agonising 'really do you love me' conversation!]

The inference here is that Patrick would be taking them in November, aged 16, whereas his fellow pupils would only be 15 - but this was considered unusual by Ginty; Kingscote pupils would expect to take them in summer, aged 16.

Doesn't that mean that Patrick's school are merely taking them 7 months early, so Patrick, being a year older, is taking them 5 months late, rather than 12 months for a June sitting.

If his birthday is in the summer, he should have been 15 going into the 5th year and may still only have been 15 if he'd taken his O levels at the "normal" time.

Yes, my birthday's in July, so I was 15 when I took my GCSEs and 17 when I took my A-levels - either this is a generalisation on Ginty's behalf, or she's simply basing it on herself, given that her birthday is on 6th January.

I can't recollect any clues to when in the year Patrick's birthday occurs. My headcanon has him as a Scorpio, but I don't think that's actually based on anything!

I would guess from Ginty's conversation that he'll be 16 in Attic Term's November - just because he says, I'm taking them a year late, everyone else is 15; she says to reassure him, it's rare for people at my school to take them before the age of 16.

Yes, I agree with that.
My problem is my RAH is a hardback which doesn't fit with my Armada school AFs, Puffin PR and TTA, and the GGB MatT and RMF, so the three sizes are in different places...

Mine are different sizes too - Faber hardbacks of Autumn Term & CT; Faber paperback of EOT, Faber Fanfare of PR, Puffin AT and the rest are GGB editions - I decided I'd live with them being different sizes for the satisfaction of seeing them all in a row, as it took me about 20 years to get all of them.

Just returning quickly to check up on the new fic .... I'm with mheloyse - all in the same place; chronological order. I only finished the collection during the read through too - but have a few duplicates from childhood collection. I am impressed by your speed - it took me 40 years to get them all!

It was probably 23 years for me - I got the school ones as they came out in Armada, in 1984 onwards, then two from a friend selling them and the others on Ebay around 2003 and as soon as GGB published the last ones.

Any views as to whether Broomhill is day or boarding?

I think my new personal timeline is Easter after RAH, Patrick is still 16, cramming for maths and a couple other O-levels and preparing for A's in humanities at Broomhill, Ginty is now 16 and revising for her own O-levels which makes a great excuse to avoid Patrick, Peter has been convinced by Dartmouth he shows promise in craftmanship and engineering and to follow a non-officer career.

A year later Patrick will be 17 in his Easter hols, in lower 6th at Broomhill, Ginty has some unspectacular O-levels and is in the Lower Sixth uncertain of her future, Peter is 15/16 and swotting like mad to get some excellent O-levels in the hope of a scholarship to Anywhere Other than Dartmouth. Peter and Patrick are thus both underage for drinking in a pub and Forestian time dilation means it's 1985.

Meanwhile back in the past, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonia_Forest helped!) Patrick's accident was a year before Autumn Term, so if Ginty is 2 years ahead of N&L she would have been entering Lower Fourth, and Patrick would have completed Lower Fourth (ie seond year) either at a prep or senior school but not beyond that.
Patrick then skips to Lower Fifth (ie repeating one of the years he missed) and is in LV and UV at the same time as Ginty, so he'd have started LV at the London day school when End of Term started. I think it's at least internally consistent...

Patrick comments at some point that he'd be able to keep his horse at Broomhill (a point in its favour) which suggests it's a boarding school. When he visits it in RAH, it writes off the whole day, suggesting it would probably be out of distance for him to attend as a day boy.

When Broomhill is described as 'tough' I always think of Gordonstoun and imagine it being in Scotland, or at least somewhere fairly far north. Interestingly, though, Sally Hayward in her continuation novel interpreted 'tough' as meaning there were frequent riots and violent pupils there.

Your timeline seems to be consistent as far as I can judge!

Yes- 'tough' does not mean the same as 'rough' which is Sally's interpretation.

Just remembered a possible clue to the timing of Patrick's birthday - isn't Blackleg a birthday present from his godfather; and doesn't he first appear in the Easter of RMF? This would suggest Patrick's birthday is in March or April ...

He's a present, but not necessarily a birthday present I don't think. Patrick tells Ginty he was a special present in the walled garden at the start of the Attic Term, and he tells Nicola he was a special godfatherly present as they're coming home from hunting in Run Away Home; there's a bit somewhere where Mr Buster has to wade through a stream somewhere and gets praised for it, to encourage Blackleg, but I can't find that scene. But I don't think it specifically says birthday anywhere.

Might as well be April as any other time, though.

Colne_dsr

Ah, yes - you're absolutely right, Colne_dsr, it doesn't link the present to any specific occasion. I suppose if Patrick has no canonical birthday, that leaves fic writers free to choose one for him ...

Edited 2015-09-28 08:32 (UTC)

March 17 is the obvious one. Possibly too obvious.

Peter's age is pretty much fixed. Nicola and Lawrie are 14 and a half in Run Away Home, because Nicola tells Giles so. Ginty is 16 on Twelfth Night. Peter comes between Ginty and Nicola, so he is 15 and a quarter, and turned 15 in September just gone, so he shouldn't be taking O Levels this year anyway. He'll take them in 18 months time, when he's 16 and three quarters.

Nicola and Lawrie would be in the same school year as him, except that they appear to have missed a year too. Probably because of their incessant illnesses up to age 12.

Colne_dsr

Peter's age is more complicated than that. I once went through the whole series working out who was how old when, and I can't remember the precise details now, but I do remember he ended up only three months from either Ginty or the twins.

IRL my uncles are six months apart (because one was adopted from within the wider family), and one of them got into trouble at school because one of the teachers refused to believe they were brothers and not cousins.

My boys are 3 1/2 months apart - thankfully in different school years so only once have had someone tell them they must be mistaken about not being twins. Few people listen to the answer after asking about the age gap, just nod and smile - though most are fine with "I only have birth to one of them" with the exception of a colleague who retorted, "Well I could tell that! I am a qualified vet, you know!"

Actually there's a whole angle for fic - Peter is actually adopted... Is he really Aunt Molly's child?

I think I'll keep Peter one year behind Ginty and one ahead of the twins (even if they should be in his year but repeated one), so making his birthday in late September would work.
Close enough for government work, as they say...

http://trennels.livejournal.com/38507.html says

"We were discussing the fact that, given the author's note at the beginning of Marlows and the Traitor, which says that Peter must be 14 when it starts (Easter holidays), and the fact that Ginty becomes 15 on January 6th in Peter's Room, there is no way Peter and Ginty could be siblings. Various theories were suggested to explain this 3-4 month gap, such as them being twins with a very large delay between births, and Ginty being the adopted love-child of Geoff Marlow and Auntie Mollie, which accounts for him having given his wife a necklace when she was born, and the trip to Paris.

"These thrilling speculations were slightly crushed by Sue Sims telling us that she had brought up the birthdays issue with Forest and Forest had said oh yes, she was never very good at dates (I'm paraphrasing here. If any of you who were there remember exactly what she said, or happen to be Sue Sims, please correct me)."

The Marlows and the Traitor follows Peter's Room. If Ginty Is 15 on 6th January, and Peter turns 14 before Easter, say 1st Febuary, wouldn't that be eleven months between them. Close, but this is the Marlows. They could be brother and sister. Lizzzar

Actually, I have a headache. Trying for an excuse for being a bit slow. But say that Peter's birthday was also Ginty's , 6th Jan. In that case, turning 14, he'd be a full year younger. As no birthday for Peter is mentioned, all we know us that it does occur before Easter, probably February, maybe March, he is 13 to 14 months younger. Lizzzar

Also, I didn't really want to get into Patrick's education, but there is nothing in canon to say he definitely attends Broomhill. I like to think that he doesn't, but we are not told. He may well fail his maths, end up in a tutorial school in London, and be allowed to stay. Broomhill doesn't sound that suitable, and I think Mr Merrick may change his mind about it being a good idea. I also think it unlikely that he'd be allowed to just work at Merriot Chase though. Patrick has been to a boarding prep school, as he mentions boarding in Attic Term. It may have been a local school, possibly he was a weekly boarder, we're not told. I don't think there's anything to say that he boarded in senior school and he does miss two years. The inspiration for his day London school is not definite, but it is highly unlikely to be a school in the Benedictine Congregation as Patrick says there are no monks and Attic Term is set in the seventies. Lizzzar

In End of Term he talks about still being unused to 40-minute lessons, which implies to me that he hadn't been at school the previous year; and also the implication is that day school is new to him.

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Patrick's education

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Patrick's birthday - when?

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