2. How many boxes did reception teachers have to tick this summer as they assessed and recorded their class’s progress?

a) 1560

b) 2495 or

c) 3510

3. The son of which famous parent was suspended from school for reportedly swearing at an assistant caretaker for confiscating his football?

4. Who said of his school days: “80 per cent of us were as bored as dead rats”?

5. What was described as “a ghastly attempt to make Shakespeare contemporary”?

6. Who spent school money on a string-bottomed bikini and a translucent handbag?

7. Which junior education minister revealed that his school days had been blighted by bullying?

8. Who was told by his Best Teacher: “You’re just going to have to jump twice as high and spin twice as fast as anybody else”?

9. Why did parents in the West Midlands allow their children to play truant to gaze up at the sky in October?

10. Which former leading education figure confessed to having been a bad boss because nobody had dared warn him of a serious mistake?

11. Why did a toyshop queue leave primary children standing still this summer?

12. Who wrote a poem to pupils describing a sadistic history teacher who twists his pupils’ ears until they fall off?

13. “When we got to dessert, things turned nasty.” For whom did they turn nasty, and why?

14. Which leading children’s author (and former teacher) said nobody under 35 should become a teacher?

15. Which minority language was officially recognised by the Government after a 20-year campaign?

16. Which road safety initiative is known as “the short arm of the law”?

17. Which popular toy was banned by the Department for Trade and Industry in May after eight children had been nearly strangled by it?

18. Who had pound;100 stolen from his wallet on a train while reading the newspaper, provoking a policeman to remark: “There are some learning possibilities here”?

19. Who said: “I am guardedly confident that the system will stand up this summer” and which system did he mean?

20. Which school treated a day out with the gee-gees as an in-service training day?

Questions set by Biddy Passmore

inside back quiz special 51

1. Children’s communication with parents, according to Alan Wells, director of the Basic Skills Agency

2. c)

3. Christopher, son of Charles Clarke, Education Secretary.

4. Luc Ferry, French education minister.

5. The national Shakespeare test for 14-year-olds, which required no knowledge of the actual plays (as described by Dr Bethan Marshall of King’s College London)

6. Colleen McCabe, former head of St John Rigby college in West Wickham, Kent, jailed for five years for squandering pound;500,000 of her school’s budget on shopping sprees and luxury holidays.

7. Ivan Lewis.

8. The diminutive dancer Wayne Sleep, by Dame Ninette de Valois at the Royal Ballet School.

9. So that they could see Concorde’s last flight to Birmingham International Airport.

10. Chris Woodhead, former chief inspector, talking about the flawed inspection of Crown Woods comprehensive in south London, which landed Ofsted in court.

11. “The Queue” was the title of a compulsory question in the national English test for 11-year-olds. The results later revealed that the proportion of children reaching the expected level 4 had stayed the same for the fourth year running.

12. Roald Dahl (of course), in a poem to pupils at The Priory school, Dorset, discovered by a teacher in October.

13. David Normington, Department for Education and Skills permanent secretary, who struggled to make himself heard at a dinner for cash-strapped heads of specialist schools.

14. Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

15. British Sign Language 16. A scheme in the Vale of Glamorgan where primary pupils reprimand drivers caught speeding outside their school.

17. The Yo-ball (a fluid-filled ball attached to a child’s finger with a rubber string).

18. Charles Clarke, Education Secretary.

19. Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriulum Authority, of A-levels.

20. Westborough primary, in Southend, slated in the tabloids for taking more than 70 teachers, governors and other staff to Ascot.