h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well they are.

As you said, they got the 1997 and 2001 election results the wrong way round on a Politics paper. They also asked Business students to "Answer all nune questions" when there were 11 questions.

My own first-hand experience of EdExcel's sheer ineptitude came around a year ago. I was sitting an A-Level Pure Mathematics (P2) paper on a Tuesday morning at 9.30 am. The previous night, I was lying in bed watching newsnight before going to sleep. Suddenly, Jeremy Paxman starts talking about "Exam scandals" and there is a picture of an EdExcel P2 paper on the screen behind him. It turns out that some of EdExcel's papers have "gone missing" and they believe that some pupils have looked at the paper in advance to prepare but, says a spokesman, EdExcel "have not yet decided how to deal with the matter".

Well, that's reassuring! I'm sitting thius exam eleven hours later, I would have liked a fing contingency plan. Turns out that by 9.30, EdExcel have a contingency plan. They'll let us all take the leaked paper and, now here's the masterstroke, if anyone is found to have got a considerably better mark on P2 than any other aths module, they will be investigated and possibly disqualified.

Oh, well that's a good Idea, isn't it. Take me, for example, I was generally a C student in maths, and my A-Level result was a D. yet, in one module (A statistics one, T2), I achieved an A grade. Now, if I had got that A in P2, then those nice men from EdExcel would have come round and said "Excuse me, we think you cheated. You're far too stupid to have got that grade". Well excuse me for putting in some effort and improving.

The most ironic thing is that this most ridiculously dim-witted of exam bodies has the word "Excel" in the title, when all they seem to excel at is ballsing up other people's education.

Teachers are subjected to inspections, schools to league tables. If a teacher made cock-ups as extraordinarily catastrophic as those made by exam boards, they would be sacked.

EdExcel should lose their franchise to examine pupils. They are destroying our future.

I'm just glad I didn't take EdExcel Exams, or they would have come round and said "You got some results, we think you cheated"! I've always said that the education system is in ruin.

-- DoctorMo --

But none of the other boards (that I've done so far) are immune. In an OCR Add maths paper a question was missing the word "paddle" and in OCR Ancient Greek, one the questions asked about someone saying something when it wasn't them that said it. Also, in AQA English Lit one of the texts that was mentioned in the question wasn't a set text. Funnily enough, Edexcel haven't mucked up anything for me yet.

"EdExcel haven't mucked up anything for me yet"

You must be the only one

Give them time- they've still got until the 22nd of August to lose my results/ mark them incorrectly.

I am in the middle of my A2 exams but I did get the good fortune of taking two exams in January These really did not make me confident in the system. For AS I got straight A's in the subjects I am now taking. In the two exams I took in january I got 100% in my maths but 30/90 in Business studies, that works out at a U. Not too bad, I know I can have a bad day and I can retake it but I had it remarked. Suddenly the mark I got was 47/90, a D. This kind of mistake is alright when there is half a year to sort it out but there won't be that time in August with the unis asking such high grades. AQA were responsible for that one by the way.

One of my sister's friends missed out on a university place a couple of years ago (the last year before tuition fees) because of a wrongly-marked chemistry paper. She managed to get her fees paid , but had to wait a year.

And 17 marks out- BIIIG cock-up by AQA on that one. One of my AQA English papers had a correction slip in it. They'd printed the wrong question!

I took a AQA English Exam, I almost laughed when I saw the last question in the book, it was a "What did you do on your holidays" question and what it really should have said was. "Print out as much rhetoric as is humanly possible, we don't care if it's relevant or true..."

Exams are bad exuse for teacher monitering and people don't go school or college to learn, more over to "be educated"

-- DoctorMO --

I've always managed to get fairly high marks in exams. This is because I have not tried to understand the subject, I have learnt to pass the exam. don't beleive anyone who tells you that those two things are the same.

No matter who tries , Ay if anyone wants a good subject learning, the libaries allways fun.

-- DoctorMO --

Understanding helps to pass an exam. I understand (some) physics and get good marks.

Actually there's nothing more fun to do right before an exam you should be revising for than not revising. I spent half an hour before my Greek exam reading through a book of christian names, finding out that Garfield means "one who lives near a triangular field". I also found out that my name means "friend of deer".

oh understanding is the ideal situation but there is just not enough time to gain true understanding before the exam.

You mean in the sixteen years before the exam?

16 years? what country are you in? in the UK we only have 2 if your luky and if you have good parents, you can get a lot of understanding, problem was that I have masses of understanding and yet because of my dislexia I still got low marks.

-- DoctorMO --

I think Bagpuss may mean 16 years of life before the exam.

No, I just got kept down a year a lot.

I got moved up . If I'd done maths a year early it would, in fact, have been two years early.

I know someone who'll graduate this year with an MMath at the tender age of 18.

Didja see that documentary about the seven- year- old kid in the USA (English, though) who's at university doing music?

Yes, I did, it's a shame no british Universty would have him, I think he plays some kind of wind instrument and is rather good. I'm sure someone will pop by with all the right info.

-- DoctorMO --