I AGREE with Susan Willis about the fuss over the difference between a grade C and a grade D in English Language (HAS, Sept 5), and suspect that over the years there have been a number of cases of the goalposts being moved at the wrong time.

Back in 1964, a couple of weeks before my A-level practical biology exam, we were told that instead of going into our school biology lab to sit the exam, we had to find our way to the Durham University zoology lab and take it there.

I was at Spennymoor Grammar, and this had never happened before. No explanation was ever given. The practical exam accounted for quite a large percentage of the total, so it was very important.

When we arrived at the exam, things got even worse, as not only were we in unfamiliar surroundings, but after two years of dissecting animals preserved in formalin, we were presented with a fresh rat.

Dissection of a fresh animal is very different to dissection of a preserved specimen.

Preparation for the exam also involved making a collection of our choosing – wild flowers, insects etc – so I had spent a lot of my spare time over two years catching Diptera (true flies ), identifying, mounting and labelling them. They were never looked at!

There is no doubt in my mind that our grades were affected by such chaos, but no fuss was made, and in those days parents kept out of school affairs.

We just had to accept it as one of life’s hurdles, and fortunately part of the grammar school ethos was that life is tough, so be prepared.

Geoff Carr, Aycliffe Village.