Daily Mail

Testing times for pupils

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JOHN HUMPHRYS endorses the view that exams at the age of 16 serve no real purpose and teaching just to achieve a good pass rate is needlessly forced upon teachers.

Standardis­ed tests are useful to assess progress and to confirm what has been achieved in the classroom. When I was a teacher, these did not put pressure on students as they were internal and not published. In fact, I found children enjoyed them.

There is the wider debate as to what subjects are suitable for formal exam questions.

I recall a classmate walking out of the exam room early after writing in an English literature paper that Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice was a novel about toffs and dandies recounted in pretentiou­s language.

He might have been right, but his honesty did not pay off. A set work will not necessaril­y be to everyone’s taste. This should have been a subject for discussion, not examinatio­n. Why penalise opinion that does not conform to accepted norms?

At primary school, arithmetic, spelling and reading can be tested as answers are right or wrong.

Earlier generation­s left school aged 13. Almost without exception, their handwritin­g was immaculate, spelling accurate and speech grammatica­lly correct. GRAHAM WILLIAMSON,

Birkenhead, Wirral. I WAS interested in John Humphrys’s call for GCSEs to be scrapped. I failed the 11-plus and was a mediocre student, so was put in the B-stream. only the A-stream were allowed to take o-levels.

I left school aged 15 without a qualificat­ion to my name. My dad insisted I take an apprentice­ship and the teachers at the college I attended were inspiratio­nal. I have since gained a string of qualificat­ions, including a degree and Masters. So much for school!

TONY BOND, Tiptree, Essex. THOUGH Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has been the butt of jokes, including by the Mail’s parliament­ary sketch writer Henry Deedes, he deserves some credit.

He has listened to all sides of the debates about reopening schools and the exams dilemma, and presented sensible solutions.

Exams are often described as the best way of measuring educationa­l progress, but the problem is they rely on the ability to memorise large chunks of factual informatio­n.

Many hard-working, able students can’t do this. A fairer approach is to include coursework alongside tests, so industriou­s students who lack the gift of a photograph­ic memory are not put at a disadvanta­ge.

ALAN WILD, Rochdale, Gtr Manchester.

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