Why can’t my slow writing son use a laptop in exams? asks a Hong Kong parent

My son is about to take his first tests at high school, and I’m concerned because his handwriting is very slow and laborious. He always underachieves in tests because he can’t get his knowledge down on paper under time pressure. Isn’t it time that children at least have the option of doing tests and exams on a computer? After all, this is the way he does most of his other work.

An increasing number of universities are trialling e-exams and the first results are encouraging. If successful, this is bound to filter down to secondary schools and could soon presage the end of handwritten assessments.

Many of us will remember our hands – as well as our brains – aching at the end of an important exam. As you point out, surely an exam should be a test of knowledge and understanding rather than a measure of how fast a person can write.

Universities are aiming to reduce the use of paper and make exam answers easier to mark. Handwritten papers can be a struggle for examiners to read. Even for students who have neat, fluent writing, it is often a challenge to produce legible script when writing under extreme time pressure. For those pupils, like your son, who struggle to write quickly under normal circumstances this can be exasperating. Left-handers can also suffer as they tend to have a more awkward pen grip, which obscures their writing.

All too often in the past, having a beautiful script was given a higher priority by some teachers and assessors than the quality or content of a piece of work. Added to that, studies show that teachers respond more positively to well presented work, which could give a small – some would argue unfair – advantage in exam grading.

There are many glitches that still need ironing out before e-exams become common practice. Paramount is developing foolproof methods to stamp out cheating. If pupils use their own laptops, this is even more difficult to supervise, as well as generating other potential problems such as students arriving at exams with uncharged laptops.