Winston Churchill's iconic "fight them on the beaches" speech did not make the grade when it was marked by a computer system, exam experts have said.

And extracts from modern classics such as Lord of the Flies by William Golding and a novel by Ernest Hemingway also failed to impress the computer.

All were marked down by a US program designed to assess students' essays.

UK exam boards and the qualifications development agency are experimenting with similar procedures.

At the moment, in the UK, computers are used only to mark some GCSE multiple-choice exam papers, in which there are right and wrong answers.

But exam boards are working on systems which would allow pupils to sit their exams online and for them to be marked by computer...

... As for William Golding, an extract from Lord of the Flies was criticised as having "inaccurate and erratic sentence structure".

Ernest Hemingway's The End of Something was also marked as not up to standard.

In this case, the writer was said to have "shown lack of care in style of writing and vocabulary"...