“It’s better than writing nothing ”


A SCHOOL standards now flared up today after the chief examiner of one of Britain’s biggest exam boards awarded a pupil marks for writing “F*** Off” on his GCSE English paper.
Peter Buckroyd – who is responsible for 780,000 candidates and 3,000 examiners – has defended his decision, saying its was “better than someone that doesn’t write anything at all”
But the Conservatives today criticised awarding points to the pupil as “absurd”. The expletive was written in a 2006 English exam in response to the question : “Describe the room you’re sitting in”. The phrase earned two marks out of 27, or 7.5 percent, for accurate spelling and conveying the meaning successfully.
Mr. Buckroyd, chief English examiner for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) exam board, said the boy would have got 11 percent if he had used an exclamation mark, for “showing a little bit of skill”. He acknowledged the language was inappropriate but has instructed other examiners to follow his example.
Mr. Buckroyd told The Times, “ It would be wicked to it zero, because it does show some very basic skills we’re looking for – like conveying some meaning and some spelling ”.
“It’s better than someone that doesn’t write anything at all. It shows more skills than somebody who leaves the page blank”.
Nick Gibb, shadow schools secretary, said : “It’s taking the desire of uniformity and consistency to absurd lengths”.