Nil points! Could do better?

Now R is at the school around the corner he comes home for lunch.  I really enjoy his company and he regales me with funny school tales.

Today (spag bol with beans and peas) R gave me his latest results.  R did warn me after the last battery of tests that his dictation risked being a very low mark.   His friend T, who lives next door and is a very conscientious obsessive conformist only got 6 out of 20, so what chance R, who isn't a perfect writing wizard?

Well, for grammar he got 4 out of 6 which is 13.3333 out of twenty;  grammar is not R's strong point, Jolly Good.  For dictation he got 0.  He revised, he wrote in neat copperplate, and for his efforts he is rewarded with the big zero.  This is because they take one point off for every error such as forgetting a comma or accent, and two points off for a spelling mistake.  And no points on for anything.  R  tallied up and strangely he did have 0 exactly, unlike one boy in the class who would have got minus 12 but for some reason the teacher did not apply her method consistently and gave the  boy zilch out of 20.

I would give the teacher 0 out of 20 because we couldn't even read her comment, but it started off by
"Be even more attentive;  re-read...splodge toss (the handwriting is very small and rather anally retentive).  Oh well, at least she didn't write "could do better" which would be not only a cliché but also a tautology in this situation.

We are trying to work out a strategy for dictation.  It obviously isn't worth trying harder, because R is almost certain to make the number of mistakes required for a zero whatever he does, 1 or 2 at the most.   And, he can make many many more errors for free and still only get 0 and not minus something.  So it would seem sensible to forget the dictation and  concentrate on areas where he is in with a chance of winning points on his school store fidelity card.

Unsurprisingly in the face of this insanity, pupils do all they can to cheat and survive.    For example, R tells me, they write the answers on the back of the pritt stick label, and make as if to glue something during the test and peel back a corner to spy on the answers.

New school rule:  all pritt sticks to have labels removed by order of Mrs Scruton the Headmistress.

I pointed out to R that they were likely to make more mistakes than ever as they tried to listen to the dictation and squint at their pritt sticks and keep up at the same time.

"There is no question of you cheating though"  I said to R sternly.

"No, it doesn't help you"  said R

"Yes it does, it helps you get points!  But it's bad for your soul.  It is better to get 0 than to cheat".

"Well" said R "at my last school they told me I wasn't concentrating even when I got good marks.  Here if you get ok marks they say you are very good and concentrating even when you're not concentrating".

I'm not sure what to make of this...