Whole class fails computer and technology course.

[Gibbo]

Staff at a Lincolnshire school have apologised after a whole class failed a computer and technology course.

An exam board rejected work by 29 pupils of Cotelands School, Ruskington, as it was sent in the wrong format.

BBC NEWS | England | Lincolnshire | School error means 29 fail course

[srochford]

What format should the files have been submitted in? I'm guessing they're submitting more than just a write up of what they did otherwise Word would seem to be OK.

[AngryTechnician]

I'm not sure who's more to blame here, the exam board for being file format zealots, or the teacher for not reading the submission instructions...

[jack0w]

Same happened to me with one of my GCSEs, was a double award too! Ended up with two F's instead of two A's! All because our coursework was in the wrong format - due to our teacher!

Was pretty gutting especially with the amount of work I'd put into this subject as due to illness I was only taking a reduced amount of GCSEs, so was banking on the double award to get me some extra A*-Cs!

[bossman]

Reading deeper into the report it seems the school has failed to meet targets set in the past and have not appealed to the exam board which i feel represents failure by the school in it's representation to educate students to this level.

[Diello]

They don't accept Word documents... but they accept Powerpoints... pillocks.

[Drummer_Boy]

Just seen this on The Register, and thought it needed a home here~:

Entire class fails computing exam by submitting in Word format ? The Register

[kmount]

That kind of news sickens me.

[plexer]

The link to the bbc news article was posted earlier.

Ben

[DrPerceptron]

They have the ability to accept and have installed the Excel and Powerpoint viewers.... but they can't do it for Word?

I remember a while back we had a similar situation where I think EdExcel refused a collection of Media/Music coursework because it was on DVD, not VHS, can't remember if we argued with them or converted it though.

[Sylv3r]

Will the teacher get punished?

[ChrisH]

What format did they want .rtf or something?

[CyberNerd]

What format did they want .rtf or something?

somehow I doubt it was a word-processing module.
More likely edexcel explicitly asked for no .docs as they would be inappropriate for the unit
( web, graphics, multimedia etc ) and the teacher was being a numpty

[Sylv3r]

What format did they want .rtf or something?

Edexcel - DiDA: Home: SPBs: Moderator's toolkit

Most of our students .pdf all of their documents they have created in word, excel, publisher etc and create an e-portfolio in Dreamweaver to store the documents in a webpage.

[Gibbo]

To be fair to them why should they accept MS Word documents? An RTF will open up in just about anything. A PDF is a universal format too and suitable for the job. I hate it when people send me .DOC or .DOCX attachments when it's not a file I will be editing.

If its the same course my school does the exam board provides an excellent guide to building a "Moderator's Workstation" - a computer with the same software set up that they will have at the examination board. Our pupils can use the machine and test out their work on that. If the school aren't following the guidelines it's nobody's fault but their own.