Standard Grade English
I was in the second class(out of four). What this meant was we were capable of achieving credit, but were little gobshites who couldn't give a fuck.
I was sat at the back of the stuffy old classroom (It had a blackboard and everything!) with my friend, James (name changed) and spent lessons either not doing work or 'subverting' the assignments i.e. taking the piss. One of our favourite things to do was the lyrics game, where you write out short story sticking as close as possible to the lyrics of a song. As this was 2004-6 this entailed songs about matinees and disbelief. As a cannibal corpse fan my friend strayed closer to the line with stories about rape and mutilation.
The real star of the class however was the teacher, Mr Mac (name shortened to protect the innocent). He was just a few years from retirement, but had lost none of his enthusiasm. He clearly still enjoyed teaching and the English language itself. Unfortunately his style clashed with our arrogant laziness. Often he would still be receiving essays a month after deadline. It was rare for him to receive a piece of work on deadline. The usual excuses were repeated;
"It's at home sir".
"I saved it to floppy disk sir; none of the computers here can print it".
"My computer's got a virus sir" (Viruses were surprisingly common the night before deadline day).
A month before folio was due (The work that constituted 25% of your grade) he had finally had enough. The face that was usually so accepting of our excuses began to flicker with disbelief.
"It's one month until your work has to get sent away." A tone of despair in his voice. "Not one of you has enough to get you a good grade. I'm not doing this for my health. I'm doing it for you. I can help you get your work up to scratch but I have to see it, I can't do anything if you haven't done anything."
Our illusion was shattered. He had known all along. There was no point lying now, just nod and look down at the floor.
"Now tell the truth, who has their essay ready to hand in." Three hands went up. "Yes I know about you two." He said waving away two whose essays sat on his desk, "Well, where's yours?" he asked James,
"Like I said, i left it on the table." Of course he hadn't, he'd not even started it.
Mr Mac paused for a moment.
"Well, go get it."
"What?" James clearly hadn't thought of this.
"You live just next to the school?"
"Yes."
"Well then it'll be know trouble to get it. We'll just be working from this sheet, you can easily catch up. Go on just tell reception where you're going, they can ring me if they don't believe you."
James was stunned. But did he come clean? No. Off he went.
Half an hour passed before he returned.
"You took your time." Mr Mac chided. "Well, where is it?"
"Didn't do it." came the mumbled reply.
"I thought as much. Take this to the rector's office." he said as he handed James an already prepared punishment slip for failure to return homework and the far more serious offence of deliberately misleading a teacher in order to skip class.
(Roger McGough-Pipe, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 13:55, 4 replies)

"My computer's got a virus sir"
Funnily enough, the same thing happened to me the day I had to hand in my SYS Physics project. Fancy that, eh? It turned out quite well for me as the teacher told me it was pointless sitting the exam in that case- one less exam to study for (it helped that I already had an unconditional university offer).

Explaining the situation to my parents was somewhat nerve wracking though...
(I Was a Teenage Spaceship, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 14:09, closed)

Ah SYS Physics, I remember it well.
I got the top mark in our school.

It was a 'D'.

Everyone else (ok, so there was only 5 of them) got an 'E'.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Wed 4 Feb 2009, 14:25, closed)

ha
SYS Physics.

I was in the last class at my school to do this, before Advanced Highers were introduced (they had already, just the school decided to continue with this).

I too got a D, highest was a C, there were 5 of us in the class, and the project part was a massive fuck about. I choose something simple (something about glycerol), involving magnets and ball-bearings. Every morning, without fail, my giant magnet would be covered in ball-bearings of all sizes.

One guy even took a different part in the exam paper, compared to the optional part we studied. He failed
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 14:55, closed)

.
My history teacher once told us about a paper he marked. Something like 10 sections with five questions each, you're only meant to do one section. This Guy had decided to attempt all fifty questions. Near the end he started to answer with single sentences. Teach’s favourite was the last in the book, on world war two:
"Most historians agree that Hitler was bad."
(Roger McGough-Pipe, Thu 5 Feb 2009, 12:29, closed)