Acornsoft is not the most imaginative of software houses, and this especially shows in their range of educational software: elementary maths programs, simple science experiments, and now multiple-choice tests. The Examiner lets a teacher design a multiple-choice examination 'paper', in which the computer displays the questions, stores each pupil's answers and produces a table of scores for the whole class.

On first running the program, you enter the date and are then presented with a menu of commands. Only the teacher should see this, for one option displays the answers along with the questions. Others let you load or save a set of questions on tape, enter new questions or run the examination.

If it's a new examination you select the 'enter questions' option and supply a title for your question paper. Up to 40 questions can be set, each with up to four possible answers, only one of which can be correct.

Assuming you have some questions in memory - a sample data file of general knowledge questions comes on the tape - the examination can be run. Just before this, the teacher chooses how many questions to use, whether to have time-limits and whether to use sound effects. The only purpose the latter serve, being reminiscent of a motorboat engine, is to get the hapless candidate flustered.

The computer is now turned over to the children and from this point it does a passable imitation of Fort Knox: no amount of mischievious key-pressing will retrive the menu and the all-important answers. Pressing BREAK or ESC has no disastrous effect - it's just interpreted as a wrong answer, though CTRL-BREAK will inevitably lose the data.

As each pupil finishes the paper, his or her score is stored in memory and when the whole class has finished the teacher can, by the use of a password, see the scores for the whole class. Up to 40 pupils can be examined this way; if the class is larger the paper can still be set, but the scores have to be written down as each pupil finishes.

Overall, the program works well; a lot of thought has gone into making it easy to use, while at the same time making it tamper-proof. The question must be asked, however, as to whether using a computer to set multiple-choice tests is a suitable use of a scarce resource.