Headteacher says handwriting is ‘tiring and antiquated’

And other stories from the stranger side of life

A pupil writing

A-level and GCSE exams should be typed on computers because prolonged periods of handwriting can be “tiring” for students, a headteacher has said. Keith Metcalfe, the head of the £9,000 per term Malvern College, has called on exam boards to drop compulsory handwritten exams for GCSEs and A-levels in favour of typed papers. He said the move would “improve fairness and accessibility for all”, adding that handwriting “has largely disappeared everywhere” and is “very antiquated”.

Brain surgeons not cleverer than the rest of us

Aerospace engineers and brain surgeons are not necessarily brighter than the general population, a new study has found. Researchers examined data from 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons who completed 12 cognitive tasks. They found that only neurosurgeons showed a significant difference, with quicker problem-solving speed but slower memory recall compared with the general population.

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Aliens will arrive on Earth after studying us for years

Uri Geller has claimed that extraterrestrial contact is imminent and aliens have been studying us for years. The 74-year-old said aliens will arrive during something akin to a “Steven Spielberg production”, possibly on the grounds of the White House. Speaking to The Sun, the self-declared psychic said: “I think they are studying us. I don’t know what they really want.”

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.