It’s a scene that can still have the power to terrify, even years after the event. Rows of hunched backs, bent over exam papers, with barely a sound other than the chewing of pens or frantic scribbling on scores of sheets of paper.

The way many students sit exams could look very different in future, however, after an announcement from England’s biggest exam board that it will begin testing GCSE students on laptops for some courses beginning next year.

Parts of the GCSE Italian and Polish courses will be assessed digitally in 2026, AQA announced on Tuesday, with other subjects – potentially including English – likely to be included by 2030.

“Technology and change are two constants in education,” the exam board said. “Moving to digital exams is the next step of this evolution.”

The pupils will still be supervised in an exam room, AQA said, adding: “Students’ devices will be offline in the exam hall; they will not be able to search for information on the internet, nor will they be able to access artificial intelligence tools.”

Headteachers have welcomed the move, and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said it was “very encouraging” that new ways of assessing ability were being explored beyond the “outdated” reliance on pen-and-paper testing at the end of a course.

But what about old-fashioned penmanship? Does a move to test pupils on laptops mean a step towards the demise of handwriting? And if so, does it matter?

Adults may use handwriting less than they used to, but ensuring children learn properly to write by hand remains extremely important, said Mellissa Prunty, a reader in occupational therapy at Brunel University London, who also chairs the National Handwriting Association, a charity that promotes handwriting and keyboard skills.

“We know that there is a deeper level of processing for reading and spelling at age four, five and six [when they are writing by hand],” said Prunty.

“When kids are learning how to read and how to write, they match the sound of the letter to how a letter looks, and then the movements that are required in writing that letter. When you have to write by hand, you have a deeper level of encoding.”

Research shows that what is key to fluency in writing – via keyboard or pen – is the speed at which you are able to do it, said Prunty.

“Whether you handwrite or you type, you have to be speedy, you have to be practiced. It’s not something that you can just roll out and think it’s an inclusive measure. You have to be teaching it, and kids have to be practising it.”

“There’s a lot of research to show that, when we read on screen, all of us, we skim and scan more. So it’s probably harder to do deeper reading comprehension on screen,” said Daisy Christodoulou, director of education at an organisation called No More Marking, which uses comparative assessment to benchmark students’ work.

Christodoulou, a former English teacher, said both handwritten and digital assessment have pluses and minuses – but, importantly, they cannot be treated as if they were the same, and certainly cannot be marked against each other.

When you change the medium, she said, “it’s like a different exam”.

“My personal take would be I can see the benefits [of digital assessment] for some subjects, but I would always want to see there to be some kind of handwritten element,” said Christodoulou, “because you think in a different way when you read on paper or write with a pen. I think those modes of thought are valuable.”

Colin Hughes, AQA’s CEO, told the Times a handwritten element would be retained in all subjects: “I do not see us in any sort of foreseeable future throwing out the notion of asking people to pick up a pen or pencil.”

“Writing is a massively important skill that children need to be able to communicate with confidence,” said Lee Dein, a former speech therapist and dyslexia teacher whose company Magic Link offers handwriting courses to children and adults.

“There are a lot of adults whose writing is so bad, they will do anything to avoid writing … but you can’t just get on to a keyboard and never write again, because it will always be needed.”