Much has been made of the tyranny of public exams. The all-or-nothing tests have been denounced as unfair, unnecessarily stressful and a poor assessment of five or seven years of secondary schooling. Psychologists have pointed to the supposed discrimination against those who suffer from exam fright, or to pupils feeling under the weather on the crucial day. Their arguments were used to reinforce the contention that examinations ran counter to the spirit of education, stifled inquiry and constricted academic development. There was also a feeling that they were, somehow, “elitist”, favouring privileged pupils who had the necessary self-confidence.

In their place, many exam boards introduced continuous assessment, basing most of the overall marks in GCSE and some A-level courses on coursework and projects carried out in a pupil’s own time. From the start, however, this produced problems. The first was gauging appropriate levels of difficulty and ensuring that schools were comparable in the standards demanded. Gradually, there also emerged evidence that some teachers were not simply assessing coursework, but were actively colluding in producing acceptable results — especially in schools eager to boost their pass rates in national league tables. The same charge was levelled against ambitious parents, with 1 in 20 now admitting to giving help with GCSE coursework.

More recently, a far more devastating indictment has come with the growing use of the internet: plagiarism. Not only can pupils look up and copy almost all they need to know, but a cottage industry has also grown up in producing and selling specimen essays for almost every subject taught in British schools. Cheating on such a vast scale undermines the whole notion of any fair assessment of ability, making the results of dubious value to both employers and universities.

Now the wheel is turning full circle. Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, admitted in a recent letter to the Education Secretary that the internet and parental help had created greater opportunities for malpractice, and that it was becoming all but impossible to ensure the authenticity of pupils’ work. Instead, he recommended a return to traditional examinations, independently invigilated and marked, as a fairer way to assessing ability. He also thinks that greater use of controlled conditions would reduce the assessment burden on pupils — in other words, they would not be worrying all the time that a mistake in coursework would affect their results.

Traditionalists see a certain irony in all this. Coursework, after all, was supposed to be the answer to exam stress. Now, it seems, the stress is prolonged by stretching it over all the term instead of just exams week. And it has become clear that, while female students do better from continuous assessment, males, who tend to work more in short bursts, do far worse. And male underachievement is now a big problem in schools. The answer, ironically, is to return to an old and tested formula: school exams.