Sunday, September 21, 2003

Well, here's good news from England!
It's official: you can no longer fail your exams:
School exam chiefs are to remove all risk of failure from key national tests by replacing the current F for "fail" grade with an N for "nearly".
...
The instructions cover English, maths and science exams at key stages one, two and three, which are taken by seven, 11 and 14-year-olds in all state schools and some private schools. The booklet for the stage two tests says: "The following method is used to note the marks awarded: 1 means that a creditworthy response has scored one mark; 0 means that a response is not creditworthy."
Er, like wrong?
The spokesman said the use of "creditworthy" was justified because some answers to maths questions were worth several marks and it was possible to gain some marks even if the final answer was wrong.

He admitted, however, that many questions had only a single answer and that in those cases "when we say it's not creditworthy then I suppose we do mean it's wrong".
But wait, there's more!
It adds: "Children who narrowly fail to achieve the lowest level targeted by the levels three-five tests are awarded a compensatory level two. Children who score fewer marks than required for a compensatory award will be awarded N."

A "compensatory level two" and "N" were used because "the focus is on reaching level three, the lowest level targeted by the tests, so if pupils don't reach that target it does not mean that they have failed; it means they have nearly reached the target".
But don't worry about your non creditworthy answers getting you an "N," kids - Maths GCSE pass mark cut to avoid mass failure.

Of course, the headline writer meant "mass nearly."