Exam questions you were asked that are wrong now

[Fiddlerdragon]

With all of the sats and gcse threads about now, I keep thinking about one of my sats questions being ‘what is the only egg laying mammal’? I was frustrated as we hadn’t been taught the answer. My entire class had put penguin even though we knew it was wrong. We’d never heard of the duck billed platypus which was the answer they were looking for. And we now know about the multiple species of echidna. What answers did you put that would be wrong now?

The question wasn't wrong though, you just didn't know the answer.

Are you struggling to understand my question? As that was the situation I was in. I’m not sure if you mean I should have known the answer at the time, which was 2, but I wasn’t taught it. Or I clearly didn’t knew the answer as it is now 25 years later, which is at least 6.

I think @cocksstrideintheevening is talking about the platypus.

i can’t remember any of the questions from my SATs tbh.

Yes, I suppose my question should have been what questions did you think were unfair when the entire class had got it wrong because it hadn’t been taught.

Tbh that’s the only one I remember as we all discussed it later and it was the only question that I knew that I’d got wrong

@Fiddlerdragon you have asked the wrong question. The question you were asked wasn't wrong you hadn't been taught the answer.

I have no clue what my SATS questions were.

It's only easy of you know the answer.... Ie if you are taught it.

I'm a teacher, on the physics gcse paper about 15 years ago they asked who was responsible for downgrading Pluto to a dwarf planet. It was multiple choice but no one knew the answer, not even the teachers. It hadn't been put on the specification either

@Fiddlerdragon Was this a science question? Not English or maths I hope. It is a very precise question. You know the answer or you don’t. Waste of time in my view. What strand of learning was this question meant to represent? Details of mammals in Australia? The question is not correct either. There are several types of Echidna (spiny ant eater) that lay eggs. Was this sats in the uk? Or Australia?

According to google it was the “International Astronomical Union”.

I guess the ease of the question depends on the other multiple choice answers. If they were along the lines of “The international sausage makers Union” I’d probably be able to figure it out. But not if the other options were “reasonable”.

I can’t believe that it has been 17 years since it was downgraded - I still instinctively think that there are 9 planets and have to correct myself.

OP is right. The question was wrong. The question was "what is the only egg laying mammal". That clearly says there is only one egg laying mammal. There are actually five egg laying mammals.

Even if OP had known the expected answer, it doesn't alter the fact that the question was wrong. If a student had answered "spiny anteater", their answer would have been marked as wrong even though it was actually correct.

This was a mock question from a past gcse question. We were asked to submit a letter to the council for the ideal location of a public house according to the map.
Being an immigrant, I had no idea what a public house was. I was relieved that it wasn't my actual paper and wonder if those who had to sit the paper understood it.
I knew what a pub was of course, but had never absorbed the knowledge of where that word had come from.

I'm still bitter about my grammar school exam, there was an entire section that my class hadn't been taught (we covered it the next month) so I obviously failed. I got almost 100% on everything else though so it was really upsetting as a child to know I should have got in. It's funny that now I can't remember for the life of me what it was

The SATs question for maths probability was ridiculous. I saw it in the news online. It was asking if a box of crisps had 3 flavours, and a third was cheese and onion and 25% were prawn cocktail, what was the probability of picking salt and vinegar. There's nothing in the question to state that we know the third flavour. It could have been anything.

‘What country is the music from?’
Answer was Africa.
I knew this but since Africa isn’t a country but a continent, I hazarded a guess with ‘Kenya’ and was marked wrong!

It still does on the odd occasion happen like that with specific key words.

A nuclear physicist explained nuclear fission. I thought wow you would only have got 3/4 marks there as you missed a key word. Especially if non specialists are marking the exam.

Like a driving test I guess. 10 to 2 driving.

Its not quite the same thing but the wording of a question caught me out on a food technology GCSE paper. It asked "give three reasons why manufacturers print the ingredients on the back of their packaging". I focused on the word back so I gave three reasons why it was more aesthetically pleasing, it was accepted industry standard and there was more space on the back. Only to realise afterwards that they meant, why do they print the ingredients on the packaging, full stop.

The op implies the question was right at the time of her exam (regardless of that they hadn't been taught about it) but I'm pretty sure the Australian echidna was 'discovered' in the 19th century.

In our mock maths GCSE the whole of top set got one question wrong because we'd never been taught what an integer was. Our teacher was very apologetic!

Perhaps it was a stretch type of question. Sometimes exams have them. Asking something that has not been taught, but that many could know. This is something my older two children might know via their reading, watching animal documentaries etc. It is also something that children could answer by crossing out the mammals listed they know for sure do not lay eggs (if it was multiple choice) and they could learn some of this perhaps from mammals they have seen at the zoo (such as penguins).

When my dd was newly 4 years old we were at the zoo w 4 adults and one asked "what they heck is that." My dd responded with Okapi! We all were shocked and quickly looked at the sign. She was correct (and she was not reading at this point). I am sure she learned this watching Dora lol.

Good lord. I can't even remember the specific content of my A Level exams, never mind anything earlier!

II taught Food and also Child Development and many of the pupils took both subjects at GCSE. So in the Food paper when they were asked ‘name a raising agent’ many of them put ‘parents’.