Not quite education

SIR – While I was studying for my Postgraduate Certificate in Education at London University in the Sixties I spent four days a week teaching at a crammer, where I learnt much more that was of use in my subsequent teaching career.

Most of the pupils were re-taking exams and it was easy – by careful analysis of past papers – to predict what topics were likely to come up and with what frequency. I applied this simple technique throughout my teaching career with success, as long as pupils were prepared to work up those topics.

By the time of my last year, I had a small A-level religious studies set, and attended a meeting organised by the exam board for teachers. We were told there were something like five topics and five questions. So I went back to school and we concentrated on those topics.

Later, because of changes in the syllabus, a specimen paper arrived which we worked through. Imagine my joyful surprise when the actual exam paper so closely resembled it that the most assiduous pupil obtained 96 per cent – a mark I would never have normally awarded.

If pupils had passed my information on to friends in other schools I hope we wouldn’t have been open to allegations of cheating.

This might not have been education in the widest sense – that happened outside the classroom – but it certainly got the results that kept me – and them – employed. Rev Richard Martin

Chaplain and Head of Religious Education, Magdalen College School, 1984-2002

Oxford

SIR – Now that some teachers are literally “teaching to the test”, this dubious practice has hopefully reached rock bottom. Kate Forrester

Malvern, Worcestershire