Thousands sign petition over ‘unfair’ English exam

High school pupils in Germany have collected tens of thousands of signatures in an online petition to complain about an “unfair” final English exam, saying it was much harder than tests in previous years.

Students from the southwestern state of Badenwuerttemberg had gathered almost 36,000 signatures by yesterday, even though only 33,500 people took last month’s statewide exam.

They complained that text excerpts from American author Henry Roth’s 1934 novel Call it Sleep were too difficult and obscure to analyse and asked for the grading to be more lenient this year.

The final high school exams in Germany, called the Abitur, are a rite of passage that all pupils who want to enter university have to pass.