Thousands of German teens were left distraught after being asked to translate a speech by Prince Harry in an English exam, only to find they couldn’t understand the royal because he was “mumbling”.
Pupils in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, who listened to the speech as part of their end-of-secondary-school exams, also complained that the quality of the recording was poor.
According to local press, even English teachers and “native speakers” had trouble completing the exercise, with was based around a speech given by Prince Harry at an Aids centre in Africa in 2015.
“It was too difficult, it was beyond what you could have expected,” Brigitte Balbach, who works for the German teaching association Lehrer NRW, told The Local DE.
More than 45,000 people signed a petition, started by student Dario Schramm, demanding that the exam be changed.
“We think it is important that students in all of NRW are given a central final exam that is feasible,” the teenager wrote in the petition.
Teens said the test was made even harder with the inclusion of “African slang” in other sections and the use of vocabulary not taught in their English lessons to discuss Apartheid.
According to the BBC, German officials have now agreed to change the exam and marks from this year’s test are set to be revised.
“We have achieved the best solution together,” Schramm wrote in an update on the petition.
Exams have also caused outrage among students in the UK this test season.
Last week, GCSE students said a biology paper asking them to explain why Charles Darwin was drawn as a monkey was “stupid”, while others complained when a question about dishwasher sales was included in a geography exam.