Despite Scotland and Wales having cancelled this year’s school exams last autumn, Williamson did so only last month, leaving headteachers floundering with exam withdrawal symptoms. Ministers seemed aghast at the thought that teachers might find better – perhaps even fairer – ways of assessing a young person’s future than their own charts, algorithms and league tables. Officials seem lost without 4.7m GCSE exam results and £300m from the schools budget to play with. Not a week now passes without a politician or teacher pleading for primary school SATs, GCSEs and A-levels to be abolished. The Commons education committee chairman, Robert Halfon, last month called for a commission to seek a root-and-branch reform of post-16 education. The vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, Sir David Eastwood, wants university admission exams to replace A-levels. Exams apparently now absorb half of all schooling time and have become a teaching and assessing tool, not an education. I know of no academic study that proves that the relentless testing of factual “subject” inputs is of any use in later life. If the school curriculum were a medical cure, it would fail its first peer review. Employers seek qualities of personality, presentation and general knowledge, which governments never teach or test.