Year seven exams AIBU?

[insanityscatching]

Dd has a statement of SEN she has autism and the usual mix of add ons. Slow processing is probably her biggest difficulty although anxiety around exams is also pretty huge.
Until I asked what arrangements were being made to support her it seems there were no plans to do anything even though her statement states the need for extra time, a prompt and breaks.
So is it unreasonable to expect that dd is given the extra time, a prompt and breaks as per her statement for in school exams as well as in outside exams or am I being somewhat precious?
The school are absolutely fine now about providing the support, might see me as being precious though and I'm wondering if I've been unreasonable but at the same time wondering why the support wasn't routinely offered anyway.
So for year seven exams would it be usual to be given the extra time etc or not?

[LIZS]

Yes it would but you will need to have it reviewed within two years of GCSEs and have established ways of working backed by staff.

[HarrietSchulenberg]

It depends how the school run the exams. Ours take place during normal lessons, but are designed as 45 min exams to allow those entitled to the 25% extra time to complete within an hour's lesson time. The teacher can also be the prompt. Rest breaks would be an issue, though.

Kids who need Readers and Scribes often don't get them for internal exams as some bright spark timetabled the exams during HCSE and A levels so all the TAs and support staff are tied up with those.

[GinandJag]

That's really bad of the school. They should give extra time to anyone that requires it, regardless of how difficult to administrate, along with any othe access arrangements.

The child should have every opportunity to do her best.

[Whichseason]

In our school student would get these things from yr 7 as they need to understand how these things would work and gain experience of the exam. So a child would need to use rest breaks from yr 7 onwards to understand how to use them effectively.

[PenelopePitstops]

In our school performance in y7 exams would be used as evidence to exam boards of the need for reader scribes when it gets to gcse. Regs are becoming a lot tighter and the more evidence, the more likely it is to get exam considerations.

[insanityscatching]

They are hour long papers so dd will be sitting them alone with her TA as prompt. Time wise it means that she will over run lessons though. It seems likely that no other child is having the extra time as SENCo was somewhat surprised I would ask although has notified each subject of the need for special arrangements.
In primary her class teacher made adjustments as a matter of course,I naively perhaps thought that secondary would as well. I suppose come GCSE's at least the school will now be able to provide evidence of dd having had special arrangements made previously.

[GinandJag]

I haven't known a school to not abandon their lower school timetable to accommodate internal exams. It should not be an issue to fit the exam into a 40, 50 or 60 minute slot. It should take as long as is needed.

They are short changing students because they are too lazy to problem solve.

[peacoat]

It's difficult in secondary as the exams are usually held during the usual lessons. We've allocated scribes to the KS3 students we know will be entitled to a scribe, but we expect there will be more as we test them later.

They really need to have them before Y10 to show evidence of history of need for JCQ's Access Arrangements.

[insanityscatching]

I just want her to be able to show what she is capable of. The extra time, prompt and breaks won't give her an advantage but they will mean she shouldn't be too disadvantaged.
Dd's pretty bright but without the support she would be bottom third rather than top third as I'd expect simply because she can't work at speed.
I suppose it will be inconvenient for the school in some respects in so far as dd will be running behind but it's for one week and she has her own TA which should ease the situation somewhat.

[goinggetstough]

The other problem we have with yrs7 and 8 having extra time is that our Pupils don't want to stay behind for the extra 15 mins or come back at lunchtime to finish off. Evidence and testing for GCSE can be collected from year 9. As a PP said they are tightening up the regulations and rumour has it changing some of the allowable tests to check for eligibility for exam concessions. The new JCQ guide will reveal all in September.

[kickassangel]

I'm a teacher, although I never did internal exams within KS3, but yes, if a child has any accommodations, then they should be available to them whenever their plan says they need them. I would assume that any child needing support for academic work would have it provided for exams, and that the school shouldn't need reminding of that. (I now teach in the US, and we always, 100% give accommodations for pupils with any requirements, even when it requires re-rooming other classes and changing the timetable).

TBH - you shouldn't have had to ask, imo. But then I am one of 'those' parents who also insists that my DD gets all of her support. If the school uses end of year results to decide which class/set she's in then yes, of course she needs to be given the support. And yes, it's important for external exams, or if you change schools, that there's a history of her having used accommodations.

[noblegiraffe]

I'm a teacher and I wouldn't know which kids in Y7 had extra time or access arrangements in their KS2 SATS. I don't have access to kids' statements.

So no, they wouldn't get extra time, a reader or scribe in internal tests, unless there was a TA timetabled with that class who would perhaps take a couple of kids out and do the test with them.

Collection of evidence of need for extra time usually kicks in in Y9 in my school, so we wouldn't be collecting evidence in Y7.

A parent who kicked up a fuss would probably be accommodated if it was a class with a TA, but if it wasn't, then extra time is probably the only thing that could realistically be offered.

That's how it is at my school. Obviously that's not how it should be.

[insanityscatching]

Noble,I didn't kick up a fuss just emailed the SENCo to ask what support dd would receive. I just assumed that the SENCo would already have contacted the subject teachers regarding adjustments needed for dd as detailed in her statement.
It happened in Primary as a matter of course not just for her SATs but for times table tests, spelling tests, the Big Write and anything else where there was a need for speed or deadlines.
Dd processes speech and text like a foreign language so she hears or reads it, translates it word for word, formulates her response, translates it and then answers or writes her response. It makes everything laboriously slow unfortunately.
Dd has a TA supporting her in every lesson and so any inconvenience should be minimal and tbf I have found that the subject teachers have been really supportive and accommodating of dd's needs once I've managed to spur the SENCo into action or have contacted them myself.
As it stands with a few tweaks of dd's timetable then the exams and extra time have been penciled in without too much disruption.

[mummytime]

In my DCs school, they got extra time from pretty much the start (it was obvious why my son needed it in the first Maths test where he didn't get it and did astonishingly badly). Sometimes this meant they took a test over two lessons of that subject (eg. they'd do 45 minutes in the lesson on Tuesday, and then an extra 15 minutes at the start of the lesson on Thursday).

Having the extra time in tests from the start is evidence that this is "the normal way of working".