Observations on exams

I like exams. I don't mean I like them in the sense that I would choose to sit one on a Saturday night instead of going out drinking with friends, or that I long to join the thousands of students and schoolchildren now taking them.

But I prefer exams to essays. My brain is the kind that can absorb a large amount of information, spill it out on to an exam paper, and then forget about it immediately afterwards, knowing that I shall never need it again.

This explains, for example, why I have always passed with flying colours every maths exam I've ever taken, yet in real life I struggle to add up simple figures.

But my ability to pass exams does not alter my grudging respect for those who successfully cheat. Such initiative, after all, is what helps people get ahead in life. So when a million GCSE English, geography and European-language exam papers were stolen from a Parcelforce van in Mitcham, Surrey in April, I was impressed. Anyone who goes to such lengths, I thought, deserves to pass, though the exam board immediately announced that it would issue new papers.

There are plenty of other ways to cheat, often with the collusion of teachers. I went to a "revision lesson" the day before my German GCSE, where our teacher said: "Let's revise the issue of public transport." "But Miss, we haven't studied public transport," we said. "Well, we'll do it now," was the answer. With her help, we each devised a paragraph about public transport in London and committed it to memory. The next day, in our German oral exam, we were asked what we thought about public transport in London.

Cheating doesn't always work. At journalism college, when I was struggling to achieve 100 words a minute at shorthand, I devised a plan with a fellow student. We would sit next to each other in the exam, taking down alternate sentences during dictation and then copying from each other during the transcription.

However, it turned out that my fellow conspirator was worse at shorthand than me, and struggled to get down even alternate sentences. We both failed. On a later occasion we eventually passed, after hours of practice listening to shorthand tapes. But next time I'll just find the right Parcelforce van.

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