A cheerful retiree, he is the oldest person in the UK to take the GCSE exam – at 92 years old.
Derek Skipper, of Orwell, Cambridge, is hoping for a fourth or fifth level, the highest level available in the free adult education course, when he receives his results in August.
However, he said the result didn’t matter much as he signed up to take a modern exam.
He learned so much more than math after using YouTube for the first time to complete the course offered by The Cam Academy Trust.
Derek Skipper from Orwell, Cambridge, UK oldest person to take a GCSE exam – 92 years old
Derek, a former radar engineer during the Korean War, took his final exams at Comberton Village College, near Cambridge, near a gym filled with 16-year-olds.
The married father of two said, “I didn’t even realize they were there. I just bowed my head and continued.
“Obviously I’m a little slower and found myself disabling at times. My brain stopped working for a minute or two.
“My time is up, but I tried most of the questions apart from those that I thought were complex and would come back if I had time.
‘There was no question of looking inside. It doesn’t matter what the result is but I want to throw 4 or 5.
“We have a friend who is now 19 years old and cannot understand mathematics and failed the final exam three times. I couldn’t help her so I decided to hit her.
“I thought it couldn’t be that hard and it kept me busy.”
Derek drove three miles a day to school from bombed-out East London as a child.
During WWII, when a bomb exploded at the wheel of his bicycle, he missed just one day at school, leaving him with a flat tire.
Earned five school certificates that are precursor to O-Levels and the equivalent of GCSEs; this includes Mathematics using a spreadsheet and a spreadsheet.
And after graduating from school, at the age of 18 he joined the RAF to learn a trade and became a radar fitter.
But the learning process in the 21st century offered up to five hours per week for two sessions per week, with an exam that allowed Zoom and calculator use.
Derek stopped driving due to poor eyesight and took the math test using an NHS-provided magnifying glass.
He added: “I really had fun and learned a lot about using calculators. I think I found it easier than many others in the course.
“But there were still a lot of things that I completely forgot or didn’t learn anything about like Venn diagrams, data collection, frequency tables, and mean, mode and range – we just did the averaging that I understood – and leaf and root.
“And I met YouTube. You just want to know everything and YouTube is your boyfriend. I’ve seen a lot of tutorials.
“If it wasn’t for Zoom, I wouldn’t have done it. I would never drive on a dark night.
“Derek was great, he was the top student in the class. The first time I taught was 92, the oldest previous was 74,” said course teacher Shane Day.
Source: Daily Mail
