DaFool wrote:School grades have little to do with success later in life.
Mm. It's true that nobody's ever cared what GCSEs (~middle school) I got at what grades for a job. Or my A-Levels (~high school) for that matter. I don't think they even really cared what classification my degree was, and if I left my current job and looked for a new one, they'd probably be more interested in the fact that I've held down a good programming job for five years than that I have a degree.
But. Five years ago, with no experience in the software industry, I wouldn't necessarily have got the job in the first place if I didn't have a degree in Computer Science. And I definitely wouldn't have got on the degree course if I didn't have decent A-Levels, and I wouldn't have been able to take the A-Levels if I didn't get at least reasonable GCSE results.
So yeah, generally speaking, out in the much-vaunted 'real world', nobody cares that much about your school qualifications, and it's perfectly
possible to succeed without formal education - I seem to recall Richard Branson left school with a pretty bad set of exam results, for example. But on the other hand, decent qualifications certainly give you a head-start, make the first few critical steps easier. The system tends to be set up to help people with decent grades.
(That said, don't let it dishearten you - the worst part about bad grades is that it primes teachers to not expect you to succeed, which biases them to not bother teaching you. If most of your teachers are aware it's not your fault that shouldn't be a problem.)