Buckroyd, chief examiner of English at the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, "told trainee examiners recently to adhere strictly to the mark scheme, to the extent that pupils who wrote expletives on their papers should be awarded points", reported The Times.
He "acknowledged that the language was inappropriate - but added that using the construction 'different to' would also be inappropriate language". The candidate in question, described as "the loutish lad" in The Sun, would have been marked higher if he'd added an exclamation mark.
"Last night outraged critics condemned the revelation as a shocking example of falling standards - and called for exam boards to be replaced," reported The Sun, which headlined its story "Oath Levels". "Education experts claim the marking makes a mockery of the exam system," added The Daily Mail, which explained "the student was given two points for spelling the expletive correctly and conveying a meaning". But the paper lost some of the moral high ground and a mark or two for its online story about the "cheif" (sic) examiner.
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