Tom Utley with a lovely piece about his niece’s music exam results:

At this point in the story, Livvy’s flute teacher
disappeared off the face of the earth. History does not relate whether
or not she went to the post office, as advised. All it tells us is that
my sister’s mobile telephone messages and e-mails went unanswered and
that the teacher’s home telephone number gave the unobtainable signal.
When Livvy turned up for her flute lessons, nobody was there. My sister
began to suspect that her daughter’s teacher had fled to her native
Hungary.

So back to the Associated Board went my
sister, to ask if somebody would be kind enough to look up Livvy’s
result and tell her what it was. You will never guess what she was
told: "I’m afraid that under the terms of the Data Protection Act, we
can only give the result to the person who entered the child for the
exam, and in this case it was her teacher. We cannot, under any
circumstances, reveal Olivia’s result to you."

"But
I’m her mother!" said my sister. "Are you telling me that I am never to
know the result of my 11-year-old daughter’s flute exam?"

In a word, the answer from the board was "Yes".

Read the rest to find out what happens.

Bureaucracies. Dont’cha lov’em?