Keyboard kids losing art of handwriting

More than 150,000 students in years 11 and 12 at schools across NSW have a problem. Almost all are skilled users of computer keyboards. Most can easily outperform their elders when it comes to text messaging on their mobile phones.

But within the next year or so all of them will have to sit 15 to 20 hours of examinations for the Higher School Certificate, and the exams will be almost entirely handwritten. Unless they have a proven disability and cannot write on the day of the exam, the only acceptable exam paper is one handed up in an individual's handwriting.

The disjunction between the acquired skill of keyboarding and the need to handwrite exams has led some schools to incorporate handwriting lessons in years 11 and 12 as students find they have to relearn the art of using a pen and paper quickly - lost after years of using computers, laptops and mobiles.

The senior English teacher at Barker College, on the North Shore, Sue Marks, says she has had top students forced to do remedial courses to get their handwriting legible enough for HSC examiners to read.

Sydney Grammar will not accept typed essays in the later years of high school. The headmaster, John Vallance, says the school places a very strong emphasis on ensuring every student can write legibly.

"Handwriting is an important expression of a student's personality, which is certainly not demonstrable through keyboarding," Dr Vallance said. "It's a skill this generation should not lose."

But inevitably there will be pressure for change. The NSW Board of Studies, which supervises the curriculum in all NSW schools - public and private - also sets and supervises the year 10 school certificate exams as well as the final year HSC.

Earlier this year it gathered 80 educators from across the schooling system and from the universities to explore issues surrounding the use of keyboards and computers in exams.

There is a limited use of computers in public exams: the year 10 school certificate exam in computing skills, for instance, utilises computers and teachers "e-assess" students using a multiple choice format.

So far the board has resisted a wholesale conversion to the use of computers in exams and for e-assessment. The general manager, John Bennett, said the board was not looking for immediate change. "It is unlikely computers would be suitable for exams in all subjects, but we anticipate that in five years we will see computers used for some parts of some exams."