A-level and GCSE exams should be typed because long periods of handwriting can be “tiring” for youngsters, the headteacher of a top boarding school has said.
Keith Metcalfe, headmaster at Malvern College, in Worcestershire, has called on exam boards to drop compulsory handwritten exams for GCSEs and A-levels in favour of typed papers, in order “to improve fairness and accessibility for all”.
Mr Metcalfe said that the pandemic meant students have become used to touch-typing and online learning, reinforcing his view that “long periods of handwriting can become increasingly tiring”.
He added that schools should continue to teach both typing and handwriting skills in equal measure, but stressed that it is important for exam boards to abandon “antiquated” handwritten exams.
“Those who spend more time touch-typing can lose speed and clarity of handwriting and thus are not able to express their ideas so proficiently in exams where handwritten answers are required,” said Mr Metcalfe.
“I am not sure this is fair or whether it achieves what a modern education should deliver. In fact, handwriting has largely disappeared everywhere except for school, making it seem very antiquated to still be going into an exam room with a pen and paper.”
Handwritten exams do not prepare children for the ‘real world’, says headmaster
Many pupils at the school for students aged three to 18, which charges £41,145 a year for boarders, type their work during lessons but write their homework by hand. Alumni of the co-educational school, which was founded in 1865, include C S Lewis, the novelist, and Jeremy Paxman, the broadcaster.
But Mr Metcalfe said that handwritten exams do not prepare students for the “real world”, where handwriting is “becoming less valid”.
“I am sure good schools will continue to have an important focus on handwriting, but simply to do this in order to prepare pupils for exams seems a little backward,” he added.
“We need to equip children with the skills they will need for the world they will enter after they leave school.
“That doesn’t mean handwriting is not important or that we want to see it as a lost art but it has already become less relevant in terms of careers, both now and in the future.”
