After three years of turbulent schooling thanks to the pandemic, thousands of children will tentatively open up their GCSE results today, hoping for good news. Experts have warned that more pupils are set to fail their GCSES this year as grades return to pre-pandemic levels. Owing to Covid restrictions, students have been unable to sit their exams for the last two years and were instead awarded grades by their teachers that were deemed more generous than normal exam results.
This year pupils did sit their exams traditionally, and many will be grappling with the pre-results nerves that many of us will remember all too well. One business mogul is hoping to change the narrative around failed grades this results day, as his inspiring journey proves that one setback doesn’t have to determine the trajectory of your life.
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Sam Carew, 43, failed his GCSEs after struggling with an unsettled school environment from a young age. After moving from Lagos, Nigeria, to London when he was just 11 years old, his world was turned upside down when cultural differences and financial struggles made him feel like an outsider among his peers.
The Northampton-based CEO told the Mirror that being uprooted with his family as a child left him feeling desperate to fit in. Despite both his parents enjoying successful careers in Lagos, with his father being a business owner and a mother teaching in a deaf school, their careers "didn’t translate well" upon arriving to the UK, which only added to Sam’s anxieties.
Despite studying a masters in Scotland, his mother’s qualification only allowed her to teach internationally and not in the UK, which is a common difficulty for first-generation immigrants in Sam’s experience.
"My dad ended up working in security and mum worked in a care home to make ends meet. They didn’t have much disposable income, so buying fancy trainers like Nike Air Max’s or Reebok pumps was not on the agenda," he explains.
While his parents were working hard to put food on the table, schoolboy Sam was overwhelmed with the cultural gap between him and his peers. The 43-year-old admits that his insecurities around blending in with other school kids forced his studies to take a back seat.
"As children, you want everything that your friends have, and that stuck with me. I didn't have the latest games console that everyone at school was obsessed with. I didn't have a computer until I went to university. At the time, those things were luxuries that we really couldn't afford."
But it wasn’t only the material pressures that Sam felt at his new school. Constant moves, an 'alien' curriculum and looking different to everyone else also played a part in making him feel isolated.
"We moved from Finsbury Park to Birmingham, and then back to Croydon, all in the space of three years. So that was a struggle,” he says.
"When I first came to the UK, I felt like I was ahead of the curve in maths because the Nigerian curriculum was far more advanced for my age. But I didn’t settle well, and that advantage slipped away.
"There was a whole bunch of stuff I'd never done before, like British history and geography. Learning about the British Isles and the type of landscapes we have in the UK were completely alien to a primary school kid that grew up in Lagos."
Sam, who has two siblings, also battled with a huge amount of cultural ignorance from students at school, as children incessantly teased him about his hair, clothes and accent.
"Having a Nigerian name like Bolaji doesn't help you at school because no one can pronounce it. I used to get teased about my name. People called Marble Arch rather than Bolaji.
"It didn’t help that I had no idea what clothes or brands were trendy over here. I was always more focused on being liked than getting my head down and working""
As a school child growing up in the Nineties, the Nigerian was bombarded with cruel jibes from children whose curiosities were fuelled by Western ignorance of African cultures.
"In 1990, the only assumptions people had about Africa were from charity adverts that showed crying kids with flies in their eyes, or people living in mud huts.
"Children at school used to ask me if I live in a mud hut, or whether I have lions in my garden."
In facing so much adversity while desperately trying to fit in at school, Sam’s grades severely suffered as a result. Lacking support from school staff, Sam believes he was immediately branded as incapable simply because he’d arrived from another country.
He said: "I try to reconcile why I lost my advantage. And why I didn't do better at school. Ultimately, I was literally just trying to fit in and make friends. If you spend half your time at school mucking around trying to be popular, there's a likelihood you'll end up failing."
When results day came and he’d only passed his English exams, Sam felt dazed and ashamed by his results. Consumed by the feeling of failure, he dreaded telling his parents who had moved his family to the UK to seek better opportunities.
"My dad is a man of few words, but his face told the whole story. He'd sacrificed so much to move us here - his business, his friends and family. To squander what felt like the first opportunity to make him proud felt awful, like it was all for nothing."
After reaching rock bottom, Sam felt more isolated than ever as his peers moved forward to their A-levels. But he refused to allow this failure to define him, as he found the strength to enrol into college to resit his exams. Finally, he passed and moved onto A-levels before eventually securing a place at a prestigious British university.
The insecurities around failure stuck with him, but the 43-year-old continued to flourish at university after his older brother convinced him to keep going. “He told me that I could be anyone I wanted to be. And I think that changed the way I looked at myself.
"At university. I wasn’t defined as the guy who flunked his GCSEs. Or even the kid who didn’t ace his A-levels. Everyone feels like they are starting in the same space there and that fresh start gave me a new lease of life."
Sam continued to use his past failures as a springboard for success following his studies, as he went on to have a 22-year career in IT before becoming CEO of a worldwide fashion brand in his Forties.
Despite never planning on owning his own business, the father-of-four took inspiration from his entrepreneurial parents while manifesting his ambitions.
"That sense of being a failure still continues to haunt me but spur me on too," he said.
His brand, Eliott Footwear, claims to be the world’s first climate-positive sneaker company, a pledge that Sam feels incredibly proud of. The brand has removed 750 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere since 2018 and hopes to rival big-name footwear companies while making an impact on climate change.
While Sam would urge school children to avoid the mistakes he made when neglecting his studies, the CEO wants kids to know that their GCSE results don’t have to define them.
"One failure doesn't change the trajectory of your life. The opportunity to turn your story around starts now.
"You don’t always get everything right on the day - that’s something that will continue to happen at certain points throughout your life. But don’t let this define you.
"Whatever your next step is, use this feeling to smash it out the park."
Do you have a story to share? Email us at ellie.fry@reachplc.com.
