[AlexC04]

There are two sides to that story. There's quite a bit going on that has been left out. England's school system really doesn't work in a way that teachers can just hand out whatever grade a student "deserves".

The kid was handed a syllabus, a marking scheme and told "if you do this you'll get an A". He threw out the mark scheme and did his own thing.

He then tried to get an A for doing whatever the hell he wanted.

I applaud him for pursuing his own interests and taking charge of his own learning - I really do - but the system doesn't allow for that.

You don't hand in creative writing and expect to get a math credit. You don't hand in physics to your chemistry teacher.

I wish the system in England were different. Maybe I'd still be teaching there if it were, but you're casting a lot of aspersion and judgement on a subject that you don't seem to know much about.

[JimDabell]

> He threw out the mark scheme and did his own thing.

That's not what the article says. It says the brief was to "design and create a multimedia project", which he did.

It says that most people went with Powerpoint, but it doesn't say that's what was asked of them.

[seabee]

The brief is just that. The mark scheme undoubtedly suggests a more restrictive approach into how you produce a project in line with that brief.

It's like listening to the first sentence your client utters ("I want a program to calculate my expenses...") and then creating Excel when all they wanted was a calculator. For better or worse, it's not about doing whatever you like, and hiding behind the brief when there was a more detailed set of specs is immature.