Placement — English Language Paper 2 Section A

Source A — a newspaper column, 2020s.

(lines 1–15) My son is nine and this term he walks to school on his own. It is eleven minutes door to door, two roads to cross, one of them with a lollipop lady who knows his name. I have been told, by people who love him, that I am brave. I am not brave; I am tired of the car park. But I understand the word. Somewhere between my childhood and his, walking to school stopped being what children did and became a thing parents decide. The distance a child is allowed to roam alone has shrunk to a fraction of what it was fifty years ago, and the streets are not more dangerous — the traffic is, in places, but the strangers are not. What has changed is us. We can track a phone, so we do. We can drive, so we do. And a child who is never out of sight never learns the small, ordinary courage of being out of sight. The first morning I watched him from the window until he turned the corner. The second morning he told me not to. I am counting that as a good sign.

---

Question 1

Read again Source A.

Choose four statements below which are TRUE. Write the letters of the four true statements.

• A. The writer's son is nine years old.
• B. The walk to school takes eleven minutes.
• C. He has to cross three roads.
• D. The writer describes herself as brave.
• E. The writer says the traffic is, in places, more dangerous than it was.
• F. On the first morning the writer watched from the window.
• G. The son asked his mother to keep watching him.
• H. The writer believes strangers are more dangerous than they used to be.

[4 marks]

Source A — a newspaper column, 2020s.

(lines 1–15) My son is nine and this term he walks to school on his own. It is eleven minutes door to door, two roads to cross, one of them with a lollipop lady who knows his name. I have been told, by people who love him, that I am brave. I am not brave; I am tired of the car park. But I understand the word. Somewhere between my childhood and his, walking to school stopped being what children did and became a thing parents decide. The distance a child is allowed to roam alone has shrunk to a fraction of what it was fifty years ago, and the streets are not more dangerous — the traffic is, in places, but the strangers are not. What has changed is us. We can track a phone, so we do. We can drive, so we do. And a child who is never out of sight never learns the small, ordinary courage of being out of sight. The first morning I watched him from the window until he turned the corner. The second morning he told me not to. I am counting that as a good sign.

Source B — from a memoir of a Cornish childhood, published 1868.

(lines 1–14) In my eighth year I was sent each morning to the school at Trewint, a distance of two miles and a half, which I walked alone in all weathers, my dinner in a cloth. My mother saw me to the gate and no further; it was not the custom to do more. The lane ran between high hedges, and in winter the mud came over my boots, so that I learned to keep to the ruts the carts had made. I was afraid of the geese at Penrose farm, which came at me hissing, and of the miller's dog, which did not; and I was afraid, most of all, of being late, for the master kept a cane for that. Yet I would not have been carried for the world. The road was mine. I knew where the first primroses came and where the stream could be crossed on stones, and I knew, by the time I was ten, every farm and every family between our door and the school. When I think of my education, I do not think first of the schoolroom. I think of the lane.

---

Question 2

You need to refer to Source A and Source B for this question.

The two children have different journeys to school.

Use details from both sources to write a summary of the differences between the two journeys.

[8 marks]

Source B — from a memoir of a Cornish childhood, published 1868.

(lines 1–14) In my eighth year I was sent each morning to the school at Trewint, a distance of two miles and a half, which I walked alone in all weathers, my dinner in a cloth. My mother saw me to the gate and no further; it was not the custom to do more. The lane ran between high hedges, and in winter the mud came over my boots, so that I learned to keep to the ruts the carts had made. I was afraid of the geese at Penrose farm, which came at me hissing, and of the miller's dog, which did not; and I was afraid, most of all, of being late, for the master kept a cane for that. Yet I would not have been carried for the world. The road was mine. I knew where the first primroses came and where the stream could be crossed on stones, and I knew, by the time I was ten, every farm and every family between our door and the school. When I think of my education, I do not think first of the schoolroom. I think of the lane.

---

Question 3

You now need to refer only to Source B.

How does the writer use language to describe the journey to school?

[12 marks]

Source A — a newspaper column, 2020s.

(lines 1–15) My son is nine and this term he walks to school on his own. It is eleven minutes door to door, two roads to cross, one of them with a lollipop lady who knows his name. I have been told, by people who love him, that I am brave. I am not brave; I am tired of the car park. But I understand the word. Somewhere between my childhood and his, walking to school stopped being what children did and became a thing parents decide. The distance a child is allowed to roam alone has shrunk to a fraction of what it was fifty years ago, and the streets are not more dangerous — the traffic is, in places, but the strangers are not. What has changed is us. We can track a phone, so we do. We can drive, so we do. And a child who is never out of sight never learns the small, ordinary courage of being out of sight. The first morning I watched him from the window until he turned the corner. The second morning he told me not to. I am counting that as a good sign.

Source B — from a memoir of a Cornish childhood, published 1868.

(lines 1–14) In my eighth year I was sent each morning to the school at Trewint, a distance of two miles and a half, which I walked alone in all weathers, my dinner in a cloth. My mother saw me to the gate and no further; it was not the custom to do more. The lane ran between high hedges, and in winter the mud came over my boots, so that I learned to keep to the ruts the carts had made. I was afraid of the geese at Penrose farm, which came at me hissing, and of the miller's dog, which did not; and I was afraid, most of all, of being late, for the master kept a cane for that. Yet I would not have been carried for the world. The road was mine. I knew where the first primroses came and where the stream could be crossed on stones, and I knew, by the time I was ten, every farm and every family between our door and the school. When I think of my education, I do not think first of the schoolroom. I think of the lane.

---

Question 4

For this question, you need to refer to the whole of Source A, together with the whole of Source B.

Compare how the writers convey their different attitudes to children being out on their own.

In your answer, you could:

• compare their different attitudes
• compare the methods the writers use to convey their attitudes
• support your response with references to both texts.

[16 marks]