Are pupils with expensive computers at home at an unfair advantage when it comes to GCSE coursework? With their ability to produce impressive-looking graphs and typewritten work in a multiplicity of eye-catching fonts, plus the benefits of a colour printer, it is now within the range of the most mediocre student to present a truly dazzling piece of work.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the message from the medium when assessing such projects.
With the best will in the world, there is a tendency to mark up the well-presented but lightweight project and mark down the poorly-presented project which may have other merits.
Inconsistency in marking can arise because even the flimsiest project produced on a computer can appear to be presented as well - or better than - a good handwritten piece of work, with its attendant hand-drawn graphs.
The general proliferation of computers at both school and home is subtly accentuating the divide between the haves and have-nots. A computer is more likely in middle-class than working-class homes. Even if a school is well stocked, it is access to the one-to-one home computer that makes the difference.
The rules and regulations controlling coursework seem haphazard in this regard, counting against the fairness of the GCSE qualification.
Practice seems to vary between schools - even within different departments in a school - with attitudes ranging from no computers at all to everyone having to use a computer in the interest of fairness.
Exam boards are dragging their feet: it all resembles the situation when calculators first found their way into schools.
As they fell in price and became widely available, the boards stipulated specific regulations for their use. They should now do the same for computers.
E Peter Johnson is a GCSE chemistry moderator in Cumbria.
