By Charlotte Ndupuechi.
Right now, thousands of teenagers across England are in the middle of weeks of intense GCSE exams. My son is one of them. Over the next five weeks, he will sit 20 exams—a relentless schedule with his future seemingly hanging in the balance.
I can’t help but wonder – why we are still testing students in this way.
Despite years of discussion around inclusion, many young people are still being assessed in ways that don’t fully reflect how they learn best.
Most of these exams rely heavily on one thing: a student’s ability to memorise large amounts of information, recall it under pressure, and reproduce it in writing within strict time limits.
I’m not against assessment. We need ways to understand what students have learned. But I do question why written exams remain the default for almost everything.
It feels increasingly outdated that we rely almost exclusively on written exams to judge intelligence and achievement. There are many other meaningful ways to demonstrate learning: presentations, project work, group collaboration, practical application, and ongoing classroom assessment.
So why are we still using written work as the “gold standard” measure of ability?
Where is the assessment of critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, communication, teamwork, and presentation skills—the very qualities employers consistently say they are looking for?
These are the skills young people need in modern workplaces and communities, yet our education system seems to continue to place heavy emphasis on written recall above other equally important forms of learning and assessment.
For students with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, processing difficulties, anxiety, or physical challenges, written exams can present significant barriers. Extra time and access arrangements help some students, but they do not address the wider question of why written performance remains the primary way we assess ability.
And there is a deeper issue here: writing is not always the same as understanding.
A student may fully understand a subject but struggle to demonstrate it under timed written conditions. Others may excel in verbal communication, leadership, design, practical application, or creative problem-solving—but be disadvantaged because those strengths are not easily captured on paper.
In a world where technology is transforming how we work and communicate, education should be evolving too. In most modern workplaces, people explain ideas verbally, collaborate in teams, present work in multiple formats, and use technology to support communication. Rarely does success depend on handwriting information quickly from memory. So why are we still so heavily reliant on one narrow method of assessment?
A broader approach—combining exams with coursework, projects, presentations, group tasks, and practical assessment—would provide a far more balanced picture of what a young person has learned and how they are developing across each subject.
Surely the skills we should be nurturing are resilience, adaptability, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and the ability to think critically about information.
We often reassure our children that one set of exams does not define them. But the system itself can sometimes send the opposite message.
I feel sorry for the thousands of young people right now trying to fit their abilities into a narrow definition of success.
The world has changed. Isn’t it time our education system changed too?
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