Idiot penning the French verb on the Spanish exams (2,6)
I believe the answer is:
as levels
'exams' is the definition.
(AS level is a type of qualification)
'idiot penning the french verb on the spanish' is the wordplay.
'idiot' becomes 'ass' (both can mean a stupid person).
'penning' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the french verb' becomes 'lev' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'on' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'the spanish' becomes 'el' ('the' in Spanish).
'lev'+'el'='level'
'ass' placed around 'level' is 'AS-LEVELS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for as levels that I've seen is " exams for him".)