Exams

There is, says Colin Hughes, who is the head of the exam board AQA, no downside to switching pupils from written exams into a gleaming modern utopia of computerised tests. Students, he says, are baffled by the fact that exams don’t take place on screens. He also seems to think the poor dears won’t be able to type if they don’t take exams on computers, as if they weren’t competent enough to learn how to use a keyboard without them. What’s more, boring old exam papers, it seems, have been causing delays in providing results for schools: doing them on a screen would solve that problem instantly, and, shazaam, Johnny and Jemima can get their C minuses in Raffia Work almost instantly. Sometimes I do wonder why certain people are so bedazzled by technology.

Sometimes, when I’m chatting about childhood, at some point it will become clear I went to a boarding school from the age of nine. Reactions can be comical. ‘You poor thing!’ an interlocutor might gasp, gripping my forearm, no doubt picturing cold showers and cruelty. I’ve always responded with bemusement, since my experience largely featured comfort and crumpets. I loved my prep school – Dorset House in West Sussex. It was a world in itself, enclosed and beguiling. In some ways it was unchanging, such as the graffitied Latin primers which were the same our grandparents had used. Yet it could be surprisingly forward-looking, as when it made a satellite link-up to a school in America, many years before the internet.

Back in July 2009, at my baby shower, someone kindly gave me a little book on the benefits of having twins. Apart from the swollen ankles and the enormous bump I was carrying, I already felt pretty blessed that, at 35, I was only going to have to do the whole pregnancy thing once. I like efficiency and this route to procreation was right up my street – not to mention the fact that I only had to give up cigarettes, Brie de Meaux, gin and chardonnay for a single period of nine months. But I hoped there would be some other benefits as I was starting to realise that, with two newborns to prepare for and no hand-me-downs coming our way, twins came with challenges of their own. I quickly scanned through the book; it was very short. Three things stood out.

It is never people, always buildings. Faces change, time blurs them, but – unless they undergo a complete makeover – buildings remain pretty much the same, bar a few coats of paint. Along the second-floor corridor lined with arched windows that overlook the street. Buses grind by below. Up the last short steep staircase and along the very top corridor, which is narrower and lined with books. They call it the library and I am often here, tucked into the window seat reading, but otherwise heading for the arched door – everything is arched here – at the far end. It opens on to a low-ceilinged room with roof lights through which the sun seems always to be shining.

This is about something that did not happen to me at school, an exam I dreaded, but never had to take. It was the only examination that ever really worried me, and it was called Common Entrance. Do not confuse it with modern imitations bearing the same name. In those days, preparing for it involved (for me, anyway) translating English into Latin and French (a proper knowledge of irregular verbs and a wide vocabulary in both those languages was required). It also demanded thorny and tricky types of mathematics, an astounding grasp of largely Imperial geography – and a full knowledge of English history since the Conquest. I actually understood the jokes in 1066 and All That, for which modern children would need a decoder.

Exams start on Monday. Thousands of A-level and GCSE pupils will be swotting hard for them right now. Some will do well; others won’t. Knowledge and ability are the two obvious keys to success. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: exam technique. Having taught thousands of students of all abilities at several leading schools, I know this is a vital reason why some teenagers are more successful than others: they use the right exam techniques under pressure. So what are these techniques?  First and foremost, arrive early. Exams need a clear head and turning up at the last minute is certain to be stressful.