Sir, - As a teacher and father of school-going children, I would, of course, be very sympathetic to any exam candidate who is presented with new and unexpected departures from the norm - either in the structure of the paper or in the marks allocated to questions. However, I am not at all impressed by those people, whether parents, teachers or those representing various associations, who complain that the exam paper was unfair because certain "expected" questions did not "come up".
This attitude exposes those who seem to think that education is about "teaching for points", and I am quite unsympathetic to them and to their "grind-school" approach to education.
Such an attitude underlines what genuine teachers try to do in school. It reinforces the depressing implications that the humanising qualities of a good education are immaterial and further, it encourages the arrogant claims of the aforementioned "grind-schools", whose frequent brag is that they have "predicted" questions.
Finally, this attitude places pressure on good teachers to teach to, and good students to learn to, minimal standards. Is this really what we want? - Yours, etc. Arthur Burke,
Chapel Lane, Newbridge, Co Kildare.