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World

Scrapping Oxford’s ‘traditional’ exams won’t make things fairer

27 January 2025

6:04 PM

27 January 2025

6:04 PM

Are exams… racist? Are exams snobs? If a report in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph is to be credited, academics at Oxford and Cambridge are taking this question seriously. In the hopes of closing the ‘achievement gap’ between white middle-class students (who scoop more of the firsts and 2.1s) and students from disadvantaged backgrounds or other ethnicities, Russell Group universities are said to be considering replacing traditional exams with more ‘inclusive assessments’ such as open-book papers or even ‘take-home exams’.

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