Periodically doing the rounds on Facebook are photos of people doing something daft, like sticking election posters upside down on their car windows, with the caption, “You had one job.”

“You had one job” came to mind as news came in of the errors picked up by students in GCSE and A-level papers over the past few weeks. Questions that were, simply, unanswerable, such as the OCR’s English literature GCSE paper which required students to answer: “How does Shakespeare present the ways in which Tybalt’s hatred of the Capulets influences the outcome of the play?”

As English teachers and many others will know, Tybalt is a Capulet and Juliet’s cousin. Tybalt is full of pride, not hate, for the Capulet family. Tybalt hates Romeo, of the Montague family. He is outraged at Romeo’s gate-crashing of the Capulet ball and Romeo’s blatant flirting with Juliet, his cousin. These are Tybalt’s hatreds which influence the outcome of the play.

I hope, and expect, that the candidates who have written a three-line answer, on the lines of the previous paragraph, will be awarded a grade 9.

But it is heart-breaking to think of the 16-year-olds throughout the country toiling away trying to turn sense on its head as they tried to answer an unanswerable question.

If this were the only error, it would be bad enough. But there have been more. The OCR board (which has not had a good year) failed, in an A-level biology paper, to include a formula which was essential to answer the question set. An AQA English literature paper mislabelled extracts from the wrong chapter of the book in question (although this error was realised before the exam was taken, and schools alerted).

Searching for answers

The prize exam fiasco was, however, going to Pearson’s (Edexcel) BTEC Level 3 creative digital media production.

Students were required to take the paper online, which makes sense given the subject matter. As soon as the paper began, however, so did the problems, which included: pupils not being able to access and view video clips; the accompanying audio failing to work; and several of the test programmes aborting themselves, leaving pupils unable to get back into them.

In the end, in one centre, the exam was abandoned - but not before hours of waiting as the centre tried to contact Pearson - with candidates becoming more distressed as time went on (and teachers’ stress levels reaching fever pitch). And Pearson’s Edexel may be due a double gold award in light of its economics A-level exam paper, if the alleged leaking of two questions proves true.

This simply should not happen. Technical specifications should not be sent to exam centres one hour before the exam, as was the case with Pearson. Exam questions should, at the very least, be answerable, and if information is needed to attempt a question, it should be provided.

The issue of exam errors is unlikely to go away as the English education system reverts back to exams as the default mode of assessment at GCSE and A level. As the quantity of exam papers increases, on current evidence, the quality of exam questions may decrease.

When you consider just how important exam outcomes are going to become, determining A-level choices and student life chances, then the requirement to do just one thing - present candidates with an exam with questions they can access and answer - becomes paramount.

A time and a place

Exam errors on this scale raise another, even more important question. Is it right, in the 21st century, to be so wholly reliant on timed exams to determine young people’s futures?

Timed exams have their place as part of a wider range of assessment tools which can assess a range of skills, including the ability to communicate verbally as well as in writing, collaborate with others and use information technology to research and present information. These are all skills and abilities which employers want in new entrants to the workplace but which are difficult, if not impossible, to assess in timed exams.

Can it be right to put our young people, at 16 and 18, through such a narrow exam treadmill which focuses too exclusively on their ability to write, rather than to make, communicate and collaborate?

In their future lives, when taking degrees or vocational qualifications, these youngsters will be assessed through a range of methods, including practical as well as theoretical work and time alone and in groups, as the qualifications aim to match the skills and abilities needed for the vocational or academic area being assessed.

Why, when they are just starting out in their lives, are we putting young people through such a horrible process?

GCSE and A level reform will sharply increase the number of hours young people spend in exam rooms and all the stress that this brings in its wake. I expect that already alarming rates of young people’s mental ill-health will increase greatly.

I also expect that, when parents see just what is being done to their children, the reaction against the testing treadmill will begin in earnest.

Dr Mary Bousted is general secretary of the ATL union. She tweets as @MaryBoustedATL

For more columns by Mary, visit her back catalogue.

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