Worcestershire headmaster claims students find handwriting in exams 'too tiring'

Students studying for A-level and GCSE exams should type out their answers on a computer rather than write them by hand a headteacher has suggested.

Keith Metcalfe, headmaster at Malvern College, has said that long periods of writing can be “tiring” for students and suggested that by enabling the use of typed papers for all it would “improve fairness and accessibility for all”.

He explained: “Those who spend more time touch-typing can lose speed and clarity of handwriting and thus are not able to express their ideas so proficiently in exams where handwritten answers are required.

“Handwriting has largely disappeared everywhere except for school, making it seem very antiquated to still be going into an exam room with a pen and paper."

Speaking to The Telegraph, Metcalfe also claimed that handwriting is becoming “less valid” in the real world and that children need to be given “the skills they will need for the world they will enter after they leave school.

“That doesn’t mean handwriting is not important or that we want to see it as a lost art but it has already become less relevant in terms of careers, both now and in the future.”