function &createElement($elementType)
    {
        if (!isset($this) || !($this instanceof HTML_QuickForm)) {
            // Several form elements in Moodle core before 3.2 were calling this method
            // statically suppressing PHP notices. This debugging message should notify
            // developers who copied such code and did not test their plugins on PHP 7.1.
            // Example of fixing group form elements can be found in commit
            // https://github.com/moodle/moodle/commit/721e2def56a48fab4f8d3ec7847af5cd03f5ec79
            debugging('Function createElement() can not be called statically, ' .
                    'this will no longer work in PHP 7.1',
                    DEBUG_DEVELOPER);
        }
        $args    =  func_get_args();
        $element = self::_loadElement('createElement', $elementType, array_slice($args, 1));
        return $element;
    }