25%.

My teacher returned my first essay of the year that I was sure would score high marks.

It was covered in red pen and he had scrawled ‘25%’ at the bottom of the page.

I protested - explaining that my work was superior to others’ essays I’d read and had he’d marked much higher.

‘I will mark you at the percentage of whatever I think you’re capable of writing,’ he responded.

He did that for two years.

I finished high in the state in the final exam.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom of his philosophy to assessing me.

First, it meant he needed to see and now me and what I was capable of achieving.

Second, it meant I was competing against myself - not other students or some vague benchmark.

Third, it kept me accountable to myself, not other students and their level of study or intelligence.

My heart sank when I learned that my teacher was coincidentally one of the two paired markers of my final exam, as I thought my result may have been the result of his bias.

My reaction proved that he had taught me that an excellent achievement was meaningless it wasn’t a rating of my potential.

‘On the contrary,’ he responded when I asked him. ‘I marked you much lower. The paired marker was the one who insisted your work was much better, and lifted your mark.’

I’ve forgotten much of what was taught to me at school.

But I’ve not forgotten this lesson.