Imagine a situation where you get an opportunity to change one thing in your school. What would it be? Why do you want to change it? How would you bring about the change?

MODEL ANSWER (approximately 335 words)

If I were given one change to make in my school, I would abolish the practice of reading out the class rank order after every examination.

The ceremony is always the same. The class teacher stands with the sheet, begins at the first rank, and works downwards. It takes about four minutes. For the first six names it is a pleasant four minutes; for the last six it is something else entirely, and I have watched a boy in my class be thirty-fourth out of thirty-five for three years running and have his name read aloud, in order, each time.

I want it changed for two reasons. The first is that it achieves nothing the marks themselves do not already achieve. Every student knows his own score; the ranking adds no information about his performance, only about his position relative to others, which is not a thing he can act on. The second is that it quietly teaches the wrong lesson — that education is a queue, and that another student’s improvement is your loss. I have seen perfectly decent people become guarded about their notes in the week before an examination.

How I would bring it about is the harder question, and I do not think a petition would work. I would begin by asking the class teachers to give each student his own marks privately, with two lines of written comment, which costs a teacher perhaps twenty minutes for a whole class. I would ask that the subject-wise class average be announced instead, so that a student can see where he stands without anyone else seeing it. And I would propose that we try it for one term only, and compare — not the marks, which will not change, but the number of students who ask for help.

A change proposed as an experiment is far likelier to be accepted than one proposed as a principle. That much I have learnt from watching other people’s suggestions fail.

WHAT THIS QUESTION SPECIFICALLY REQUIRES

THREE questions are asked outright, and all three carry content marks:

1. WHAT would you change?
2. WHY do you want to change it?
3. HOW would you bring the change about?

Give each roughly a third. The third is where marks are lost — most candidates describe the problem at length and then say only "I would talk to the Principal".

CHOOSE SOMETHING SPECIFIC AND SMALL. "I would change the education system" cannot be answered in 350 words. One concrete practice — a ceremony, a rule, a timing — lets you be precise about all three parts.

For the HOW, be practical: name the steps, name who you would approach, and anticipate the objection. Proposing a trial period rather than a permanent change is the kind of realistic touch that lifts the answer. FORMAT AND MARKS DIVISION: see "Composition — grade bands and marking" in the Writing Formats & Marking (Reference) chapter, along with the worked model for this composition type.

USE THIS AS A MODEL, NOT AS AN ANSWER TO MEMORISE. The question asks for an ORIGINAL composition, and every year examiners identify scripts reproduced from guide books; a memorised answer can be penalised for plagiarism and will in any case read as borrowed. Study this piece for its STRUCTURE — how it opens, how the paragraphs are ordered, where the required tasks are answered, how it ends — and then write your own, about your own school, your own family, your own town. Your own specific detail is worth more marks than anyone else’s polished sentence.