When handwriting disappears in Britain we’ll know who to blame: exam boards. The largest board, AQA, wants candidates to sit exams using laptops.
Two language GCSEs will go digital in 2026; others will follow. And anyone acquainted with children and schools can tell you that teachers aren’t going to teach, and pupils aren’t going to learn, anything that isn’t actually required by the curriculum. So if this generation loses the ability to write by hand, the transmission of the skill could be lost in a generation.
Not to be hyperbolic, but this is the high road to the end of civilisation. Handwriting is the most fundamental way of telling each other things after the spoken word. The Sumerians, who from almost 5000BC used an
