Key Vocabulary List

examination, to hold / take / sit for / revise for / pass an examination, to set / administer / give an examination

to fail / flunk an exam

to pass an exam with flying colours

to sail through / get through / scrape through an exam

to gear yourself up for exams

mock, written examination, viva voce

deadline (for smth), to miss / meet / have / work to the deadline, to impose / set / extend the deadline

to be examined in smth, to be re-examined in smth / to retake an exam

examiner, examinee, examining board

student’s record book

test, listening / oral / practical / written / multiple-choice test

achievement / aptitude / intelligence / IQ / language proficiency / assessment test

to give smb a test

to assess, assessment

to test smb on/in smth, to have a test on/in smth, to retest smb on smth

test-paper, to mark test-papers

unified school leaving exam, standardized test, competitive exam, finals

tool, screening / assessment / educational / research tool

bribery, to resort to bribery

fraud n

crib n

to excel at/in smth.

to be accountable for smth, accountability

ratings list

compulsive liar

teacher, guidance / class / head teacher, lenient teacher

to play truant, truancy

borderline candidate

to be expelled from school / university, expulsion, to throw smb out of the college

coursework

stress management, to handle the pressure

Phrasal verbs

to break up

to go back

to scrape through

to drop out

to mug up

to swot up

to polish up

to brush up (on smth)

Text A

Public Exams in Great Britain

The organization of the exams which schoolchildren take from the age of about fifteen onwards exemplifies both the lack of uniformity in British education and also the traditional “hands-off” approach of British governments. First, these exams are not set by the government, but rather by independent examining boards. There are several of these. Everywhere except Scotland (which has its own single board), each school or LEA decides which board’s exams its pupils take. Some schools even enter their pupils for the exams of more than one board.

Second, the boards publish a separate syllabus for each subject. There is no unified school-leaving exam or school-leaving certificate. Some boards offer a vast range of subjects. In practice, nearly all pupils do exams in the English language, maths and a science subject, and most also do an exam in technology and one in a foreign language, usually French. Many students take exams in three or more additional subjects.

Third, the exams have nothing to do with school years as such. They are divorced from the school system. There is nothing to stop a sixty-five-year-old doing a few of them for fun. In practice, of course, the vast majority of people who do these exams are school pupils, but formally it is individual people who enter for these exams, not pupils in a particular year of school.

An example of the independence of the examining boards is the decision of one of them (the Northern Examinations Board) in 1992 to include certain popular television programmes on their English literature syllabus. This was against the spirit of the government's education policy at that time. The idea of 100,000 schoolchildren settling down to watch the Australian soap opera Neighbours as part of their homework made government ministers very angry, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Text B