British Students Condemn AQA, Launch Facebook Group Protesting Having To Learn

26th January 2010

Thousands of A-level students in the United Kingdom have launched a massive Facebook campaign against the national examination body AQA for setting an examination paper that did not follow on from the spoon fed education system they had grown used to.

An anonymous student - Keith Wilson from East Winch, West Norfolk; latest Facebook Status ‘AQA sucks balls, off to play some more Farmville’ – expressed his anger to our reporter via email:

“The paper set on the 25th January 2010 was totally unfair,” he typed with furious block capitals, “The questions in the paper were not discussed in depth in any of the notes or in the preparation I had taken. It is almost as if they expect me to have an interest in the subject I am studying and do some reading and research not explicitly related to the content that is printed in the textbooks.

“None of the questions we are protesting appeared in a single mock exam - how were we expected to know how to answer them?”

The group has been gaining a lot of support, at the time of writing it has in excess of 5,000 members. Many issues are being debated on the group’s forum; most discuss lengthy ways of how they can complain – or even seek revenge – at the examination body. One contributor even commented: “If I had spent as much time reading around my subject as I have trying to find out the chief examiner’s home address I probably would have passed Monday’s exam.”

The group has gained some criticism, particularly levelled at the poor grasp of the English language demonstrated by many of the group’s members – who supposedly represent the highest calibre of student in the United Kingdom. Keith Wilson was quick to defend this issue though:

“We are Biology Students not English Students. We’re not all Shakespeare.” His signature caps-lock styled email explained, “In fact this brings up another of my complaints. I study Physics... but a lot of the questions require me to have knowledge from Maths classes – and I don’t take Maths.

“If it’s a Physics paper it should be testing my Physics knowledge, not my Maths knowledge. In fact, I think there were also a large number of long words I did not understand... why are they testing my reading and writing skills? English is even less similar to Physics than Maths. I was going to suggest they replace the papers with a picture based question and answering system, but I also suck at Art.

“Maybe I should just be able to go into the Exam Hall, stand on my desk, drop an apple and shout ‘gravity’ – that would show I know what Physics is.”