Editorial: It is essential that there are examinations in secondary schools

​The Greens have in recent years emerged as the most radical of the main parties in British politics.​

After the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour Party, it is the Greens who seem furthest to the left. This is apparent in the leader of the Greens in England and Wales, Zack Polanski, taking an ongoing liberal approach to immigration when it is clear that the influx of foreign arrivals to the UK is at crisis levels, and has been for years.

There is a fresh example of Green radicalism from the Scottish party, which has proposed scrapping homework for primary school pupils and a shift away from exams in secondary.

The party calls this part of a “bold” proposed overhaul of the education system, insisting that primary school homework provides “little, if any, proven benefit”.

The Greens’ manifesto for the upcoming Holyrood election will include a commitment to end the use of homework in primary school and an overhaul of the exams system in secondary.

While there is broad agreement among educational experts that homework for the sake of homework is of little value, some concept of homework is useful to children of all ages – particularly given that we have entered an age of significant home working in employment, in which many adults now also have to find the discipline of working by themselves.

Moves away from examination in older school pupils are much more problematic. It is interesting that even the Scottish nationalist government, which is no slouch when it comes to radicalism, has been clear that while it is prepared to rebalance assessment it “does not mean that exams will be removed”.

Exams are essential. They are the fairest way of assessing who is the most suited candidate for challenging higher education courses that are vital not only to the economy but to the proper functioning of society.