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.

[DrummerBoy]

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.

[Andrew_C]

If the school aren't following the guidelines it's nobody's fault but their own.

But it isn't the school being "punished", it is the kids who have "failed" through incompetence of their teacher. Maybe they should follow the recent example and sack them?

[Butuz]

What do you use to PDF them?

 

Butuz

[mpe]

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.

No doubt they'd be most unhappy if they were sent something in an OASIS format

[mpe]

But it isn't the school being "punished", it is the kids who have "failed" through incompetence of their teacher. Maybe they should follow the recent example and sack them?

Even handing the teacher a UB40 isn't going to do much to help the students concerned. Who, it appears, would have to effectivly retate the exam.

Instead it would make more sense for the school to lodge an appeal on behalf of the students.

[_Bat_]

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.

 

I have the same feelings. Several months ago while looking for a job, I submitted my CV to an organisation in PDF format, thinking they'd appreciate having it in a universal format (I doubt very much they need to or even should edit my CV). When I phoned them they said they couldn't do anything with my CV until I sent it to them in DOC format. I was a little amused by this to be honest.

[penfold]

The story seems to gloss over the fact that the problem came from the teacher. If the pupils had known what format to save their documents in they could have all passed the exams the first time.

 

It is yet another case that pupils suffer from poor teaching, and the fact that it has not been picked up until too late is realy poor.

 

Apparently the problem was put the problem down to "technical glitches". Surely it cant be a teahcnical glitch. If this was the case it would be documented that they couldn't save in the appropriate format and that Edexcel would have been contacted before submitting the work. What in fact is more likely to have happened is the teacher hasn't read the requirements for submitting work and let the pupils save in a format they dont accept.

 

What is really even more frustrating is that I always remember being told to read the question carefully to ensure you answer it properly. If this was done, the problem could have been avioded.

 

OK Edexcel could have handled it a bit better. But it sounds like basic instruction problem where the teacher hasn't read everything properly and the school is trying to pass the blame onto someone else. In the meantime only the pupils suffer as its their exams results which have been affected.

[SpuffMonkey]

When I was a lad - our whole class failed Geography - the teacher used to make us sit in silence while he listened to the Test Match on his radio. The good old days.

[sparkeh]

Isn't a bit much being made of this, ok its a complete cock-up but Edexcel are allowing them to resubmit in the correct format. They haven't really failed have they.

 

Though it would be gutting to find out after resubmission that you had failed.

[CyberNerd]

What do you use to PDF them?

 

Butuz

 

openoffice

[_Bat_]

When I was a lad - our whole class failed Geography - the teacher used to make us sit in silence while he listened to the Test Match on his radio. The good old days.

 

During my A-Levels one of my units we had a supply teacher for most of the course due to staff illness. He informed me that the interim deadlines throughout the unit were simply guidelines and that it was unnecessary to hand your work in at those deadlines to get it checked if you felt you could use the time it was being checked to continue with it. So basically he was saying it wasn't compulsary to do this. So this is exactly what I did and when the final deadline arrived and the work was marked, I was asked why I missed the interim deadlines as my work would have been marked a B but was now downgraded to an E due to missing the deadlines.

 

I did inform them that I'd been given incorrect information but this made no difference, I ended up with an E for that unit which affected my final grade at the end of college.