Year after year, the media report a rise in GCSE and A level examination pass rates.

But not all children are good at exams!

It is the stuff of nightmares – you have done none or too little revision – you get to the exam room and the question in front of you may as well be written in Chinese -

1. You have got to admire this kid – after all – he/she is right.

   

2. An excellent example of lateral thinking in the face of adversity

   

3. That is how I would do it ……..

   

4. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat !

   

5. In all fairness, the questioned is answered thoroughly…

   

6. Peter is a genius in my opinion…..
   

7. If you can’t answer the question – invent a more entertaining alternative – it shows initiative!

   

8. I would add extra marks for imagination in this case.

   

9. Exam Rage?

   

The following snippets were of wisdom were first reported by Richard Federer of St Pauls school – a summary of funnies he came across during his years marking homework / exams

• “Actually Homer was not written by Homer, but by another man of that name”
• “When you smell odourless gas, it is probably carbon monoxide”
• “Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practised on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic, Bach died from 1790 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.”
• “Blood flows down one leg and up the other”
• “Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head”
• “The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth”
• “Respiration is composed of inspiration and then expectoration”
• “Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out “Tee hee, Brutus”

I think he was revising from “The Beano”

• “Joan of Arc was burn to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence”
• “To collect fumes of sulphur, hold a deacon over a flame in a test tube”
• “Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went round giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.”
• “It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking.”
• “H20 is hot water. C02 is cold water.”
• “The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son??””
• “Nitrogen is not found in Ireland, because it is not found in a free state.”
• “The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliette are an example of a heroic couplet, Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.”
• “The moon is a planet just like Earth, only deader”
• “Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper”
• “Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
• “Rhubarb: A kind of celery gone bloodshot”
• “Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.”
• “Thomas Jefferson, a virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand”. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead”
• “Vacuum: A large, empty space where the Pope lives”
• “Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died of this.”
• “To remove dust from your eye, pull the eye down over the nose”
• “Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers”
• “Artificial insemination is what the farmer does to the cow instead of the bull”
• “Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.”
• “Momentum: What you give a person when they are going away”