The chief examiner of Italy’s equivalent of A levels has been dismissed over “grave errors” in examination papers, including an English test taken from a Namibian website that critics described as “almost incomprehensible” in places.

Students taking English as part of the maturita exam were given questions on an unlikely text: an online interview by a Yemeni journalist with the German-born owners of a resort at Swakopmund in Namibia. The text, provided for examiners by the State Tourism Institute, was entitled Feel of Home at Villa Wiese – Swakopmund Namibia, described as a “funky guest lodge”. It omits definite and indefinite articles and inverted commas, uses have when has is needed, spells budgets as budges and has only a passing acquaintance with good style.

“Pity us poor Italians,” said Sergio Perosa, Professor Emeritus of English literature at Venice University. “No wonder so few Italians speak English properly.” The errors were spotted by Jean Woodhouse, a veteran teacher of English in Italy who was formerly private tutor to Marina and Piersilvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister’s children by his first wife.

“If the examiner had been one of my pupils I would have failed him or her,” Miss Woodhouse told Corriere della Sera, which published the exam paper with her acid comments. She said that she had only highlighted “the most glaring” errors and infelicities. “Frankly the text should have been thrown in the wastepaper basket.”

Students were also asked to explain why the desert was “named as” the West Coast Recreational Area, which Miss Woodhouse corrected to “known” or “called”. She also censured the examiner for allowing a sentence beginning with “and” and letting through the tautology “a visit to the Cape Cross Eal Colony is worth a visit” – not to mention failing to spot the missing S in seal.

She was also scathing about a question asking candidates to describe similar places they had visited “using your imagination”, when the places were presumably either real or imagined, but not both. Miss Woodhouse scrawled furiously at the end: Gravamente insufficiente! (“Seriously inadequate!”) Professor Perosa said that the text had been taken off the web unchecked, and as a result the exam was couched in “a kind of pseudo-English, or what was once called pidgin English. Even the average waiter in Venice speaks English more correctly than this.”

Mariastella Gelmini, the Education Minister, said: “I apologise to the students, even though I am not directly responsible for the errors.”

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