Schoolboy seeks exam questions with FOI request

A German teenager is trying to obtain a sneak preview of his exam questions by invoking his state's freedom of information laws.

Simon Schräder, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Münster, contacted the education ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia asking for details of the tasks set in his upcoming Abitur exams, the German equivalent of A-levels.

He used an internet platform called fragdenstaat.de ('ask the state'), which is designed to help citizens gain access to public information, similar to the UK's WhatDoTheyKnow site.

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The ministry has one month to legally comply with his request, although the deadline will fall after he sits his first paper.

"If they answer in time it might fit for one exam," Schräder told The Guardian. "I did think beforehand that they probably wouldn't send me the exams. I'm already revising, and I'm not relying on them to get back to me.

"I thought it was worth a try; I just wanted to see what they would say."

The ministry has acknowledged the request is being processed and that the deadline would be kept, but experts suggest the demand is unlikely to be met.

The Open Knowledge Foundation, which set up the fragdenstaat.de site, said that, under the freedom of information law, requests will be turned down if they would "significantly impact the success of an upcoming administrative measure".

Nevertheless, Schräder, who is studying maths, physics and English, has been offered work by Correctiv, a transparency-related research organisation, which was impressed by his gusto.

"If I have time before university starts I'll definitely do it," he told The Guardian.

Schräder's request is certainly not the strangest ever made. One person used the UK's equivalent of the law to ask Wigan Council what plans it had in place to protect the town from a dragon attack, while another person wanted to know the number of children in the care of Southend Council who had been micro-chipped.