Simon Lebus, the chief executive of exam board Cambridge Assessment, thinks that computer-based assessments taken at regular intervals through a course might replace traditional terminal exams.

Let us not forget that we are halfway through an exam reform process, the main characteristic of which is the abolition of in-course assessment and its replacement with terminal exams.

Perhaps we should take a moment to remind ourselves why these reforms are being carried out.

First, because frequent tests taken throughout the course - what used to be called modular exams - were regarded as adding pressure on students. They resulted in continuous teaching to the test. There was never any opportunity to venture off-syllabus. Too much time was spent on exam preparation and not enough on actually teaching.

Second, because frequent high-stakes tests taken throughout a course are invariably associated with resit opportunities, which further increases the emphasis on exams.

Third, because Michael Gove rightly thought it was a bit rum that students going to university had forgotten work they had studied for modules two years previously. He thought it was sensible to require students to commit to memory a whole course, as students all did before 2000. Learning small packets of knowledge, having a test and then forgetting it is not the same as assimilating two years’ worth of work. If you want to test a pupil’s competence at French you need to do that at the end of a course. I am not interested in the fact they have learned how to count up to a hundred in French at the age of 15 if they might have forgotten that by the time the course concludes.  

Getting assessment reforms right 

All good schools have regular testing anyway - they don’t need an exam board to get involved. Nor should they welcome the prospect of continuous assessment right through a course leading to one high-stakes grade at the end. Have we already forgotten what happens to both teachers and pupils with such systems? I know this is normal in some universities, but there is much less pressure on getting “the right degree class” than there is on GCSE, A-level and BTEC grades. Degree class does not tend to change your life, whereas school exam grades emphatically do.

Simon Lebus predicts that in the future exams will be done on computers. That is certain, I agree, once we get past the problem of 1,000 students taking public exams simultaneously in some colleges and the fact that computers are much less reliable than pens and paper. One day we will get to that point.

Barnaby Lenon is chairman of the Independent Schools Council

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