Text 1: The number 47, by Mariam Hussain

An original contemporary blog post.

On my first morning at secondary school, I reached the bus stop twenty minutes early. My new blazer felt as stiff as cardboard and my bag contained six sharpened pencils, three spare pens and a packed lunch big enough for a family. I had checked the route so often that the little map on my phone seemed printed behind my eyelids: take the number 47, pass the leisure centre and get off outside the library.

The bus arrived. I climbed upstairs and sat where I could see the road ahead. For ten minutes, everything matched the map. Then, instead of turning towards the leisure centre, the bus swept straight on. Familiar shops disappeared. Rows of houses slid past, each one more unknown than the last.

A notice beside the driver explained that roadworks had changed the route. I read it twice, although the words did not improve on a second reading. The blue dot on my phone drifted away from the school like a boat that had slipped its rope.

I hurried downstairs and asked the driver where I should get off. He told me to stay on for two more stops and pointed out a footpath that would take me to the school. His calm voice made my problem sound ordinary and solvable.

At the next stop, another pupil stood up. She had the same green tie as me and was clutching a folded letter with the school’s name across the top. We recognised each other’s panic immediately.

‘Lost too?’ she asked.

We followed the footpath together. When the school buildings appeared beyond the trees, they looked less like a fortress than they had in the photographs. We reached the gate just as the first bell rang. By the journey home, the number 47 was simply a bus again, rather than a test I had to pass.

Text 2: Beyond the mill pond, by Samuel Price

A newly written period memoir. It imitates a late nineteenth-century voice and is not a genuine historical source.

The new school lay on the other side of the town, and on my first morning I set out while the lamps were still burning in the cottages. My mother had described the way carefully: I was to follow the lane to the mill pond, cross the wooden footbridge and keep the church tower before me.

At first I walked proudly, pleased to be trusted with the journey alone. The frost made the hedges glitter, and my boots struck the hard road with a brave little beat. Yet beyond the mill pond a white mist covered the fields. The church tower vanished, the lane divided, and my confidence vanished with it.

I chose the wider path. It soon narrowed to two muddy tracks and ended beside a locked gate. For several minutes I stood there listening. Somewhere beyond the mist, a school bell began to ring. Its thin notes seemed to count out every moment of my lateness.

Presently, a milk cart came creaking along the road. The driver leaned down while I explained my trouble. He laughed, though not unkindly, and told me that I had turned towards the railway instead of the town. He lifted my muddy boots onto the cart and carried me as far as the churchyard.

From there I ran. I arrived breathless, with mud on my coat and the lesson already begun. The teacher looked at me over his spectacles, but before he could speak, the milkman appeared at the door and took the blame for delaying me. This was not strictly true, and I was grateful enough to remember his kindness for the rest of my life.

That afternoon the mist had lifted. I could see the church tower from the mill pond, exactly as my mother had promised. The road home, though no shorter than before, seemed to take half the time.

Compare the two writers’ accounts of travelling to school for the first time.

In your response, explore:

• the challenges and feelings presented in each account
• the methods each writer uses to bring the journey to life.

You must support your ideas with details from both texts and identify clearly which text you are discussing. You may find it helpful to compare how each journey begins, the problem encountered and the way the account ends.