An inconsolable Ms Chaplin said, “I’d heard rumours that not everyone gets A*s and that some people might just get an As. To be honest we all thought it was a scare story put round by the teachers to get us to revise. But this? A grade B? I didn’t expect this.”

The true nature of the revelations only came to light after baffled teachers consulted a government website and found a B was one grade lower than an A.

A spokesperson for the exam board said, “A few years ago one boy thought he’d got a B when we mistakenly printed his percentage score on the results slip, 8. Of course 8% was more than enough to warrant an A”.

Solanki and Mawhinney

Examples of poor parental efforts were rife, not least as several signed their work ‘by Mum and Dad’. ‘There was a GCSE geography project on Town Planning that has come to exemplify the malaise that has set in over fake coursework since its heyday in the Nineties,’ said one examiner, who loves trying to make dirty words out of the available grades. ‘It started off well enough – I gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed that the basic syntax errors were an attempt to emulate a 16-year-old’s grasp of the English language, not the work of an illiterate turd.

‘But barely was I two pages in, when the author stopped discussing the relative merits of building a shopping centre outside St Albans and started ranting about when the hell they were going to phase those traffic lights at the top of the high street and how they must have missed the area’s annexation by Poland. I still gave it a B. Those traffic lights are a bitch.’

As the average grades for fake coursework continue to plummet year-on-year, parents were quick to defend their falling academic achievements. ‘There’s just so much more pressure on parents these days,’ said Fran Andrews, who ruined her daughter’s chances of an A* by forgetting to take the internet links out of the Napoleon essay she downloaded on her behalf. ‘By the time you’ve lied about your address to secure the best primary school and then faked a whole religious faith to get into a good secondary, you barely have the energy to forge a decent Macbeth essay. But at the end of the day it’ll all be worth it. Like any caring parent, we just want the best shot at ultimately falsifying that means-tested student fees form.’

In a melodramatic press conference a spokesman conceded ‘We have finally agreed to stop leaping to the defence of Drama. We accept now that all the well-intentioned justifications of creative maturity, team-building and developing the individual’s confidence were delusional, and admit that kids just prefer running around, pretending and dressing up to proper subjects like Maths and Science.’

Dorothy Jensen, head of Drama at Lancaster Grammar School added ‘I took Drama at GCSE and all I’ve got to show for it is a frustrating career as a drama teacher. I wish I’d done Business Studies instead.’

Alan Parks, a private tutor hired to help Yoda had been working with him since he was a newly qualified teacher aged 23. Now 63 and coming up to retirement, he was overjoyed with his pupil’s success. ‘I am just elated, my whole career has been about this moment, Master Yoda just couldn’t get his sentence formulation cracked, but we got there eventually.’

Parks has every right to be elated, he is the 15th tutor hired by the Jedi Council to work with Yoda. ‘To be honest, his habit of putting sentences the wrong way round was getting a bit embarrassing,’ said Mace Windu, a member of the Council, ‘Whilst representing us in public his small stature and funny little green face went down a storm, but his patterns of speech left a lot to be desired.’ Parks worked with Yoda to break the bad habits and to instil a sense of calm. ‘Often it was the heightened expectations around Yoda that caused him to malform his sentences,’ said Parks, ‘he was nervous and he hated it when people laughed at him. We just worked on his confidence more than anything else and slowly we started to unravel the problem.’

Yoda received his GCSE result last week but wanted to keep the achievement quiet in order to avoid a fuss. ‘I just want to carry on like normal,’ said Yoda today, ‘I really don’t want to draw any attention to this, I am like, ok, I’ve done this, I’ve passed, let’s move on. There are far more important things to be dealing with, such as the rebel alliance and that troublesome Darth Vader.’ It is thought that Yoda will not be taking his studies any further at the moment but may well look at A level English in a few years. ‘I would like to keep my hand in for sure, but for the moment, very pleased I am!’ he quipped.

‘It’s very worrying,’ said Gerald Norton, an expert on spammers and phishers. ‘This guy can spell words like ‘bank’, ‘security’ and ‘password.’ He can also construct a correct sentence from ‘link’ ‘to’ ‘confirm’ ‘your’ ‘password’ ‘click’ ‘on’ and ‘the’. So far, punters have always been able to recognize phishers by their appalling language skills.’

George Watson, 56, said he was completely taken in by the phisher, who has been dubbed ‘Shakespeare’ by bloggers. ‘You see, when I got this email I noticed that all the words were spelled correctly and the sentences were OK. So, I thought it was from my bank. If these phishers and spammers are learning to spell and write correct English, we’re in deep trouble. I have always relied on the fact that they can’t spell for toffee.’

But a successful phisher claimed the phishing community was unfazed by Shakespeare.  ‘Most of our target audience can’t spell for toffee either, so they won’t notice the difference. If a monkey took up phishing, it would make a million. No problem, period.’

Recent Ofcom statistics reveal that the past 22 years has seen a consistent year-on-year increase of newspaper articles about exam results. ‘What are they teaching them?,” he spluttered.

Jeremy Dear at the NUJ came to the defence of his charges. ‘Naysayers don’t appreciate the hard work and effort that goes in to creating well-rounded, effective page fillers.’

Sheik Mahand

‘Though there is a sense of euphoria and freedom at having finished our GCSEs’ said Simon Wilson, 16, ‘we realize that our parents have been very supportive recently, so we all went home to offer a bit of extra help around the house.’

Meanwhile teachers and invigilators were seen in the park, burning their ties, signing each others shirts and passing out from too much Smirnoff Ice and WKD.

shitsu_tonka

Drumming on furniture considered 'poor interview technique'

A new scheme aims to help drummers gain the numeracy and literacy qualifications which could help them find paid employment and escape a life of drumming.  ‘We need to get across the message that even if you’re unpopular, socially awkward and are struggling at school, it doesn’t mean you automatically have to become a drummer,’ said Tim Goffe of the Musician’s Union.  ‘Get some GCSEs and you could easily become a guitarist, or if that’s not possible, do a vocational course and become a bass player.’

However, the scale of the challenge was highlighted at today’s launch as a photo opportunity was ruined when a drummer came in too early and walked straight into shot.  He later dropped his pen half way through filling out the enrolment form and was made to start again from the beginning.