What a complete and utterly pointless policy from CASA.
It would appear that these candidates have virtually replaced the functions of the Content and Index pages with a staggering multitude of tags. Such an approach is actually counter-productive to the aim and value of tagging. As the purpose of tags is to swiftly and precisely locate a selected number of the more-frequently referenced sections in publications, these candidates have, through the over abundance of tags per publication, unwittingly neutralised any benefits they may derive from them.
So, if candidates are putting all these tags on the books themselves, which supposedly all have Contents and Index pages, and are disadvantaging themselves by doing so - so what?
The same observation applies to the practice of highlighting and underlining of texts in permitted publications. Some candidates have highlighted or underlined entire pages. What then would be the benefit in such indiscriminate actions other than for the candidates to view coloured and completely underlined pages during exams?
Well, my dear CASA, this is a perfect example of the logical
fallacy of hasty generalisation- and proves nothing. The fact that whoever wrote that paragraph does not see any benefit to large amounts of highlighting does not mean there is no benefit.
If I may be so bold, I suspect that the real reason for all of this, alluded to in the "security issue", is that many airline cadets are writing large amounts of information on tags in languages that are not English, and therefore the exam supervisor has no way of knowing whether or not the student is cheating.