Why the sudden flashback to 1999? Because that, according to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority’s website, was the last time the ICT National Curriculum for 5 to 11-year-olds was updated. Scan right down to the bottom of the page, and there you’ll find: “This content relates to the 1999 programmes of study and attainment targets.”

At first I thought this was a mistake, an outdated page that was left lingering by mistake on the QCA website.  So I rang the QCA press office to point out this heinous error. “That is a long time ago,” said the press officer, before putting me on hold to check what had gone wrong. “Apparently, that is the current curriculum,” he proclaimed upon his return. “They’re in the process of updating it now.”

Indeed they are. It’s part of Sir Jim Rose’s review of primary education. The review that concluded that primary schools were failing to keep pace with children’s IT skills and that “ICT is not yet providing value for money in many schools.”

Is it any wonder when the guidelines are a decade out of date? Hence you’ll find pupils are required to “gather information from a variety of sources – for example, people, books, databases, CD-ROMs, videos and TV”, but there’s not even a mention of the internet in the entire key stage 1 ICT curriculum.

I’m sure most schools and teachers are smart enough to apply the curriculum to today’s technology – in fact I’ve seen first-hand evidence of it at my daughter’s new school.  But surely the ICT curriculum should never be left to fester for so long again.

As my rather embarrassing performance demonstrates, actual IT understanding didn’t seem to play a huge part in the marking of the paper. On questions requiring written answers, you could have written an entire page of sound argument, but if you didn’t include the precise terms or points in the mark scheme, you lost the mark.

In fact, the whole experience went a long way to convincing me of a common argument: that today’s exams are largely based around training pupils to memorise the particular key facts they’re expected to know.

Barry’s example in his blog post is a great one: Mike correctly stated that sending an email is better for the environment than writing a letter, but as the exam board hadn’t thought of that he couldn’t get the mark.

Similarly, in a two-mark question about how to deliver a finished graphics document to a client, I offered up email as one of several answers – which got me the first mark. Common sense dictates that anyone putting this answer would know to actually attach the file to the email first, but as I didn’t specifically state this that second mark eluded me (and that’s despite me listing FTP and CD/DVD as alternatives, both of which were also only valid for that first mark – in the latter case the second mark was given, unbelievably, for specifically saying you’d then give the disc to the client).

There’s undoubtedly a way of passing these types of exams, but it doesn’t necessarily involve learning your subject properly. Instead, it involves knowing the key terms that the marker is looking for, and teachers (with pressure on them to hit high pass rates) are undoubtedly aware of this. I’m sure it’s not just IT that has this problem – I seem to remember taking that exact approach to one of my weakest subjects back when I had GCSEs coming out of my ears. But it’s the IT industry that’s complaining of a lack of adequately trained applicants, and if this is the start they get it’s not hard to see why.

So how did our team of so-called experts do?

Top of the class was deputy editor, David Fearon, who scored a lofty 70 out of 80 – which in this day and age is probably enough to land him a scholarship at Oxford, let alone an A*. David only let himself down on his definitions of testing, extreme data and erroneous data – although given the ridiculously prescriptive marking scheme, we believe it was the answers that were erroneous, rather than David.

Staff writer Matthew Sparkes landed second place, with a creditable 67 out of 80. He fell down on his definition of the term modelling – which caught out a number of our staff – and his model of a central heating system would have incinerated the house’s residents. No Corgi badge for Matt.

News reporter Stuart Turton scored a respectable 64 out of 80. Stuart fell victim to the same tightly-marked definitions as David Fearon. Although we’re going to have him flogged for answering that a database was more likely to be used for financial modelling than a spreadsheet.

It’s a “see me after school” for peripherals editor, David Bayon, who scores a rather worrying 59 out 80. The definitions weren’t his strong point, and his rather literal definition of what is meant by the term e-mail (“electronic mail”, according to Mr B) was not looked upon kindly by the official answer scheme, which specifically ruled out such impertinence.

Meanwhile, it’s back to the bottom of the class for PC Pro’s youngest team member, Mike Jennings, who may have to be shipped back to his local comprehensive after scoring 55 out of 80. In Mike’s defence, when asked to give an advantage of using email over the post, his perfectly plausible response of “saves the trees as less paper is used” wasn’t among the official acceptable answers. Although his assertion that staff “will act totally naturally” when being observed means his appraisal is going to be an interesting exercise this year.