More than trivial

Despair:

Students sitting the NZQA Level 3 History causes and consequences paper on Wednesday were confronted with the word in a quote from Julius Caesar: "Events of importance are the result of trivial causes."

Students were asked to analyse the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with Caesar, with reference to the causes and consequences of a historical event.

...

Some of his peers thought trivial meant "significant", he said.

"Trivial isn't a word that you hear too frequently, especially not if you're in Year 13," he said.

A definition of the word should have been included in the exam, he said.

Chairman of the New Zealand History Teachers' Association, Graeme Ball, agreed.

He called the exam a "little bit of a snafu" on the part of NZQA, and said the language used in questions should be "accessible to all".

The exam was not testing comprehension, so it was "unfair" to make that part of the assessment, he said. 

New Zealand's schools are giving diplomas to illiterates. Knowing the word trivial should be trivial.

Try using it in a sentence. The failures in New Zealand's education system are more than trivial.