By "UK schools", it'll almost definitely be referring to GCSE (general certificate of secondary education) qualifications. And in this case, in ICT (Information Communications Technology; which doesn't contain any/no real programming).
So a couple (real) ICT GCSE exam can be seen here:
They actually do contain a bit more 'technical' stuff than when I did ICT GCSE (~7 years ago I guess?), but there's still not much.
As for this story, I agree with an earlier comment that there might be another side to this. None of my ICT teachers (as far as I know) knew how to program, but at the same time I can't imagine any of them would have failed a clearly-good piece of coursework.
So a couple (real) ICT GCSE exam can be seen here:
http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31318_pp_08_jun... http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/pp_08_jun/ocr_31316_pp_08_jun...
They actually do contain a bit more 'technical' stuff than when I did ICT GCSE (~7 years ago I guess?), but there's still not much.
As for this story, I agree with an earlier comment that there might be another side to this. None of my ICT teachers (as far as I know) knew how to program, but at the same time I can't imagine any of them would have failed a clearly-good piece of coursework.