By "UK schools", it'll almost definitely be referring to GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) qualifications. And in this case, in ICT (Information

By "UK schools", it'll almost definitely be referring to GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) qualifications. And in this case, in ICT (Information Communications Technology; which doesn't contain any/no real programming). So a couple (real) ICT GCSE exam can be seen here: http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31318_pp_08_jun_l_gcse_2359_02.pdf http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31318_pp_08_jun... http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31316_pp_08_jun_l_gcse_2357_02.pdf http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31316_pp_08_jun... They actually do contain a bit more 'technical' stuff than when I did ICT GCSE (~7 years ago I guess?), but there's still not much. As for this story, I agree with an earlier comment that there might be another side to this. None of my ICT teachers (as far as I know) knew how to program, but at the same time I can't imagine any of them would have failed a clearly-good piece of coursework.