ABSTRACT

In the first incarnation of this book, I spent some time listing and then answering objections to exams. Two things governed the decision to omit that material here. First, it ran to well over 1,000 words, and considerations of space made me take a hard look at it anyway. But second and more important, such a ‘debate’ is now a philosophical matter only. Twenty years ago there were moves afoot to reduce the dominance of examinations and introduce more continuous assessment, coursework and the like; there were even those (though I was not amongst them) who thought the days of timed papers were numbered.