GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) Handling Data coursework should be a golden opportunity to engage students in meaningful "real-life" mathematics. The marking criteria for GCSE handling data coursework puts emphasis on students' ability to plan and carry out a statistical project and to make meaningful analysis of the data they collect. Yet there are also marking criteria that demand a certain level of statistical manipulation--charts and calculations--without which it is impossible to gain the higher marks for analysis. In this article, the author ruminates on the challenges and frustrations of GCSE handling data coursework. (Contains 6 online resources, 4 resources and 1 footnote.)