Content area
Full text
I've just come back from a yoga retreat. I wouldn't normally spend my weekends with people who are lactose intolerant and wear pendants, but some disastrous A-level results pushed me close to the edge. My colleagues tried to reassure me, telling me it was the exam board's shoddy marking and not my dodgy teaching, but I wasn't convinced. It had to be my fault.
The only clue to my students' horror performance came from an imperious examiner's report that sneered at those candidates who thought Macbeth's driving ambition could be described as an "emotion". I should have warned my students that the latest assessment objective involved splitting semantic hairs. The problem with the exam board is that they are victims of their own success. Their new spec has proved so popular that they booby-trap their questions to sabotage the rank and file....