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VOGUE DOES… STRAIGHT A’s: REALITY BITES

Vogue Williams RTE 2 Season Launch 12 Image Name: Vogue Williams RTE 2 Season Launch 12 Description: Repro Free: 11/09/2014 Vogue Williams pictured at the RTÉ Two New Season Launch in Gateway House, Capel Street. Picture Andres Poveda
Vogue Williams RTE 2 Season Launch 20 Image Name: Vogue Williams RTE 2 Season Launch 20 Description: Repro Free: 11/09/2014 Vogue Williams pictured at the RTÉ Two New Season Launch in Gateway House, Capel Street. Picture Andres Poveda
VOGUE HANGS OUT WITH MEMBERS OF MENSA IRELAND Image Name: VOGUE HANGS OUT WITH MEMBERS OF MENSA IRELAND
Vogue Does StraightAs_3 Image Name: Vogue Does StraightAs_3
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Vogue Williams1 Image Name: Vogue Williams1
Vogue Williams Image Name: Vogue Williams

Mid August. Every year. You can’t miss them. Plastered on the front pages of the papers, beaming out of the Six One News. The young faces of the 600 Points Club. The Leaving Cert’s Straight A students, the certified cream of the crop.

But what happens to the 0.3% of Leaving Cert Students who ace the perfect Leaving Cert? Do six A1s automatically equal success, happiness and a bulging bank account? And how do those Straight A students steal a march on their peers?  Are they natural superbrainiacs, or is there some kind of secret strategy involved?

Fresh from beating  rugby player Mike Tindall and Dame Kelly Holmes to win ITV’s ‘BEAR GRYLLS’ MISSION SURVIVE’ reality series, Vogue Williams recalls her own underwhelming 300 Point Exam Results 11 years ago. She was far from a Straight A student, yet so far she’s successfully achieved all her goals.

In light of her relative success in life Vogue reckons she might have had the smarts to do a better Leaving Cert, she just didn’t have the focus. So she decides to prove that she could’ve done better, and sets off on a journey to discover how.

En route she meets a selection of 6, 8 and even 9A1 wunderkinds, as well as people who never got a Leaving Cert and ended up successful, and an amazing girl with Downs Syndrome who got near maximum points in her Leaving cert against all the odds.

Vogue spends time at a Centre For Exceptionally Talented kids to meet future Straight A prodigies. Is the secret of academic success in ‘Tiger Parenting’ and hothousing kids from birth…or does that just  breed precocious little monsters?

Questioning her basic ‘smarts’ she sits the Entrance Exam for MENSA – the organisation for the ‘super bright’. But is she smart enough to get in?  She ‘goes back to school’ at Dublin grind school Ashfield College; experiencing the atmosphere of a school that’s 100% about getting top academic results.

Vogue resits her mock Irish Leaving Cert paper – nowadays 40% of the marks are scored from the Oral and, since talking is what she’s good at, she aims to trump her original ordinary level C grade.  Can she do it?

Vogue also visits Ireland’s biggest secondary school, where the emphasis is on the arts and self expression, not top marks and yet they still churn out the 600 pointers.  She also meets a family who’ve been home schooled outside of the exam system, resulting in a jail term for their mother – who’s vehemently anti formal education.