Time’s up for written English Gcmiscaeparaiss computers are allowed
GCSE English exams will no longer need to be handwritten, under plans by one of the country’s largest assessment boards.
From 2025, pupils taking both English Language and English Literature with the exam board Edexcel will be allowed to type their answers. The move, which experts have warned must not signify the beginning of the end of handwriting for children, aims to make it easier for pupils to edit their answers and simpler for papers to be marked.
Up to 125,000 GCSE English candidates – around 20 per cent – will have the choice to sit their exam either onscreen or by hand under the plans, which are being reviewed by the Department for Education (DFE) and Ofqual.
Pearson, the company which runs Edexcel, hopes to be able to offer an onscreen option for all GCSES by 2030 to increase accessibility for students, as well as other benefits.
Sharon Hague, the managing director for Pearson Schools, said: “Onscreen is a better experience for students who need accessibility adjustments. On-screen brings benefits for all students too. They can highlight and annotate information, cut and paste text and make easy edits to their answers.
“It’s what many students are used to doing when they work at home and in the classroom, and it’s undoubtedly how they will work in their careers too. Students are asking for the choice to take exams onscreen. In summer 2023, we had 15,000 typed responses for GCSE English alone, as part of access arrangements or a preferred way of working.”
However, experts stressed the importance of maintaining handwriting as part of children’s “literacy toolbox”.
Mellissa Prunty, the chairman of the National Handwriting Association and divisional lead for Occupational Therapy at Brunel University, said: “Handwriting is very important for young children when learning to read and spell.
“It has a deeper level of processing as you have to map the sound of a letter, to the visual representation of the letter and then produce the sequence of strokes
to write the letter. It supports these early literacy skills.”
She added that educators must promote a “hybrid world where we have a number of skills in our literacy toolbox, the ability to write by hand, type and of course text. It is not about one over the other.”
It comes as a number of the UK’S major exam boards have taken steps towards digital assessment. Last month, OCR announced it would offer a digitally-assessed GCSE in computer science for pupils starting their course next year. Meanwhile, AQA, the country’s largest exam board, is aiming to roll out on-screen exams and it hopes that students will sit at least one major subject digitally by 2030.
Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The move towards online assessment is positive ... but does not come without challenges – including the ongoing disadvantage gap between those who may have more access to technology at home and therefore more familiarity with its demands.”
Peter Thomas, a spokesman for the National Association for the Teaching of English, said: “The move to online is worrying because it puts a premium on those kids who have the facility for keyboarding as a form of written communication.”