I Wanted the Exam Breakdown. I Got the Shuttlecock.

Another parent replied that their daughter “would have absolutely hated to have detailed feedback”, and credited their own “non-helicoptery propensities”. I have never had a non-helicoptery propensity. I have a folder.

Thirteen years later, the school published feedback after all: two Year 7 girls on their first term, in their own words. One had expected secondary school to be “hard and sad like how the movies say”, and it wasn’t. The other gives the full breakdown. On her first day she sat staring at a sheet of paper, “(questions about me!)”. Questions about yourself are the only paper in the world nobody has written a Bond book for.

Then her house, Athena, which her buddy told her was definitely the best, producing a reaction recorded as “YAYYYYYY”. Then badminton club, at which she was, by her own account, horrible, until, with encouraging teachers, she stopped hitting the air instead of the shuttlecock. Then the tuck shop cookie: “I bet I could’ve eaten 7 of them”. Marks: not mentioned. Percentile: not mentioned.

Our daughter started Year 7 this September, somewhere else, and I went in with the 2012 parent’s spirit and a list. Day one, how was maths? There was a girl who can do the splits. Day three, what set are you in? The orange house is the best house, and the other houses know it. Week two, I drew a table on the back of a council-tax envelope with columns for subjects and effort. She filled in the column for subjects with clubs and the column for effort with tuck-shop prices. Flapjack, 80p.

By half-term I had stopped asking about maths. I was asking whether she had hit anything yet. Then the first written report arrived, feedback for the parent at last, and I read it in the car outside the school, twice. The line I keep going back to is from PE. “Now making regular contact with the shuttlecock.”

It is on the fridge, above the flapjack prices.