The English Faculty have announced all three parts of their undergraduate examinations will be handwritten this summer.

The announcement comes almost a week after the Faculty produced its 2024/5 Information for Candidates (14/11) which did not include exam formats.

In the Faculty’s original email, Part IA and IB examinations were listed as handwritten and three hours, while the format for Part II was not mentioned. English students received a corrective email from the Faculty eight minutes later detailing that final exams will be handwritten.

The decision comes after Part IB examinations faced issues with computer software Inspera in May this year. Second-year English students, who were trialling the software, encountered extreme technical difficulties.

Some students experienced the first part of their exam being deleted by the software, meaning they had to stay behind to handwrite their answers, after already completing a three-hour exam. The lined paper they used to finish the examinations reportedly took fifteen minutes to arrive.

The University is currently undergoing a process of attempting to identify a system for digital assessment following the Inspera pilot last year, Varsity understands.

The change to English exams also follows a decision by the HSPS Faculty to revert to handwritten assessments due to an overuse of AI in exams last year.

The format for last year’s English Part II examinations was a three hour, handwritten paper. This was the first cohort since the pandemic to experience this exam format, with 2023 finalists completing five-hour open-book examinations.

For this year’s Part II students, the exams they will sit in Easter will be the first handwritten examinations they will have completed since first year.

The exams range from three-hour closed-book examinations to 3.5 hour closed book examinations. Students are able to bring in 1000 words of notes to all examinations in Part IB, and all except Practical Criticism in Part II.