An open goal in extra time for ‘pushy parents’

Shall we just do away with exams? I think we should. They’re hard and unpleasant and they necessitate a certain amount of preparation – which is invariably also hard and unpleasant. Anyway, what’s really to be gained by all that contrived time constriction and pressure? It’s not like in later life you’ll ever have deadlines to meet, rules to abide by and stresses to navigate. And does any company today honestly still judge a person on something as outmoded as his or her output?

I only ask because, according to a new report published by Ofqual, the number of children getting extra time in their exams has risen by a whopping 36 per

It’s not like in later life you’ll have deadlines to meet or rules to follow

cent in the past four years, with increasing numbers of students suddenly developing “special needs”. Nobody seems to know how or why so many British schoolchildren have suddenly found themselves in “extenuating circumstances” (two words I remember using repeatedly and always fruitlessly on my own teachers as a pre-teen), but Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the education and employment centre at the University of Buckingham, has offered up one interesting theory.

He believes that extra time may “confer an advantage”. And that, as more parents have become aware “that extra time can be claimed and that more and more candidates are getting it, more are trying for it”.

Smithers even went so far as to suggest that requesting extra time is “an open goal for pushy parents and pushy schools”. Which makes one wonder where the academic David de Geas are.