Let's set our own exams this summer

This summer, we can evaluate the performance of young people who would otherwise have done GCSEs or A-levels on the basis of the examination papers which we ourselves create and mark as schools. We don't actually need OCR or Edexcel to legitimise the fundamental process of challenging and motivating our own pupils. In fact, to shuffle off the mortal coil of Ofqual could be good for all of us.

There was a time when a crisply printed question paper could be quite engaging. Thirty years ago, examiners went on their gut feeling about a candidate's fluency, accuracy and intelligence; but then this approach, disparaged by so-called professionals as unreliable 'impression marking' (and look how reliable exam grades are now, when almost 20,000 appeals are upgraded each year), was murdered by that upstart assassin the 'assessment objective'. Question setting was systematised to the point of inanity and the old idea, in humanities subjects in particular, that an exam question could launch a sort of civilised dialogue of inquiry was lost. Instead what soon mattered more was the tyranny of the A* grade and the indispensable skill of knowing not about Hamlet or the Napoleonic Wars, but about whether you were supposed to be addressing AO2 and AO4 or was it AO3 and AO5, or was that only in Paper 1?

Exams these days are just killing the love, baby. Like many teachers who have toiled beneath their yoke, I know that genuine engagement with a subject is often undermined rather than enhanced by the compulsion to maximise marks. Qualifications often disguise, or distract from, the real underlying talent. Put it this way: if you are trying to get into the Royal Academy of Music, no one will ask whether you got grade eight with distinction. All they are going to do is listen to you play.

Yet whether it is the ABRSM or LAMDA or AQA (we Brits have a peculiar and disturbing genius for institutionalised certification), it's actually teachers who end up doing the grading. And it used to be schools who certificated their own students: back in the day, if you were getting decent grades at Westminster or Winchester, that was good enough for top universities. Elitism, you may say. Well, yeah, but that's what people hated about elitism - it was elite. But, in fact, grammar schools did it too - the evaluations of conscientious schoolteachers were deeply respected by both students and dons.

And now that Coronavirus is killing the love even more - just not at all helping with the vibe - we mustn't leave our students in the lurch. The fact that the officialised, proper authenticated examination machine is suspended until further notice need not mean the death of questions. Let's do them ourselves. We can get really good teachers - perhaps HoDs from other schools - to set them, and then draw up a schedule for June; then send the papers to candidates in an email at a particular time of the morning or afternoon, and perhaps ask parents to invigilate and require the written paper (typed, in fact - which everyone prefers anyway) to be sent back within two hours.

I mean, it's not a foolproof Fort Knox system - but who cares? Some students are dishonest and unreliable, sometimes their parents are as bad, but most - the vast majority - would appreciate the effort being made and cooperate in order to get the process done. It would give them a meaningful target in the online learning marathon which we are all about to embark upon.

What we must not do is string out the suspension until school resumes, then recommence the new term with a barrage of overdue exams. We will want to start afresh, afresh, afresh as Mr Larkin put it. If exams have one merit they mark closure - the end of a chapter, the prospect of a new beginning. We need to create that prospect precisely so that we can start the new school year with relief, appetite and energy.

So, listen up school leaders. Take control back from the acronyms who have taken over education and get your act together. You have the skills and the technology within your reach to organise and implement a great exam season - possibly the best ever. Give your students , your pedigree racehorses, a Derby (even the donkeys need a run). If enough schools take the initiative, we can try to award alternative grades, or even sensitively written reports of each student's performance. (God forbid that university admissions departments might be required to actually read things rather than punch grades into the Computer-says-no mainframe.)

Who knows whether, as schools are besieged by Coronavirus, what breaks out from the exam system might be something a bit more like real education?