At least 20 university professors have taken the unusual step of writing to parliament to protest at the questioning in the Dutch language exams taken by tens of thousands of pupils last month.

In their letter, the professors say the exams do not test ‘any useful knowledge’, and do not test writing and reading skills. In addition, some of the multiple choice questions had more than one right answer.

The students’ union LAKS hotline had 20,000 complaints about the Dutch exam for pre-university pupils.