15 April 2026

I was never the beneficiary of continuous assessment. All my exam passes were based solely on written examinations under the supervision of an invigilator. In mathematics, we had to memorise formula and never had access to a calculator.

Times changed with multiple choice questions, continuous assessment and less reliance on closed book invigilated examinations. This approach continued to develop right into the twenty-first century. And with it came a cultural change in University education.

Students became customers and academic staff became service providers. There was an expectation that students would get value for money and that meant examination passes. There was less emphasis on the invigilated examination.

During the Covid pandemic, there were no formal examinations. After fifty years of development, things are beginning to change again with the invention of AI which can not only write academic courses but produce essays and solutions at the press of a button.

Universities are beginning to return to the old form of examination which obliged students to depend on what they knew and to write their responses to questions under the pressure of time. This is to ensure the integrity of their work and some have gone so far as to insist on the examination being handwritten.

I suppose access to computers may lead to access to the internet, AI and all sorts of additional help. Handwriting is individualistic and authentic. It is what we long to discover in Biblical texts – the original autograph, the author’s handwritten work, the first edition, the truth.