Monday's Quote of the Day
09:15 UK time, Monday, 30 June 2008
"It does show some very basic skills we are looking for" - Senior GCSE examiner on mark for candidate who wrote expletive
Peter Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), is a stickler for the rules. So when in 2006 a GCSE candidate responded to the task "describe the room you're sitting in" with a two-word expletive ending in "off", Buckroyd gave the student two marks out of a possible 27. It showed "some simple sequencing of ideas" and "some words in appropriate order". And the candidate would have got a higher mark if an exclamation mark had been used.
The 
