AIBU to ask current or former GCSE examiners what happens with illegible handwriting?

I work in an Exams Office and I haven’t read all the posts so someone may have already said this.

Usually if the writing is poor this will be flagged by the Subject teachers and the candidate / student will be assessed by the SENCO Team to make any reasonable adjustments to help him to work a way that gives him the same chance in exams as others entering. But these adjustments need to be their usual way of working. So School should have picked up on this if it is hard to decipher his writing and arranged for an assessment for using a laptop.

Thete are instances where Access Arrangements can be made during the Exam Season but this would usually be because something had happened that changed their way of working such as a broken arm or bad burn on their writing hand.

If he is going to 6th Form or College ask for him to be assessed at the start of the year.

if you are really concerned contact the school Exams Office tomorrow and ask if anything can be put in place to help so your know you have tried.

Good luck to him with the exams

My son is currently sitting his a-level exams and is using a keyboard and screen for his exams because of his handwriting! Definitely speak to the school as it would be such a shame for your son to be disadvantaged in this way. All the best!

EDIT Just seen that your son is currently sitting his GCSEs. You could raise it for his next set of exams eg A Levels.

This sounds very similar to the situation with SQA exams. (I believe that the exam board has changed this year, however, so I can't speak for the 2026 Scottish exams.)

The Principal Assessor for Nat 5 English used to sample papers but also had problematic papers sent to him.

Teaching cursive should be done away with, my son's perfectly neat and legible handwriting is just twice as hard to get through in cursive. Pointless.Very few people have decent cursive handwriting.

This was not fiction. I was the teacher doing the transcribing. It was for an English paper. The student sat more than one paper and several subjects, across their exams, over several years, and only one paper was returned to me to transcribe. As an examiner we have been told to do our best but we do have team leaders to refer to (with our exam board and subject). There are also other options available for us to try, enlargement, colour change etc and we want to do our best for students. Obviously, we do have a lot of scripts to get through though and handwriting can be tricky to read.

OP unfortunately it’s far too late to be worrying about this now

Yes-I mark for the largest exam board. We can refer scripts.

i had/have terrible handwriting and my history teacher was concerned it would prejudice an examiner, as he worried they’d make a negative judgement of me based on it. I was a strong candidate and made A’s mainly in my highers. Had a uni professor tell me my handwriting could lead to points removed if he couldn’t read it. I tried really hard in all the exams in these classes and on the days it counted so maybe was fairly legible at times. I made good grades generally so don’t think it affected me too much other than people thinking i’m a bit thick at times 😆 I have always wondered what happened though it unreadable. Just assumed they wouldn’t mark it

Exactly! I can’t imagine anyone signing up for such a role either! 😂
That is why teachers constantly tell GCSE students how important legible handwriting is.
I think my team leader would block me if I escalated every question I couldn’t read! 😂The only things we are told to escalate is anything related to safeguarding.

No they don’t! You clearly haven’t read the posts from current examiners stating that there is no option to do this. If we can’t read it then they don’t get the mark. We don’t mark full papers anymore, just individual questions.

His handwriting is by no means the worst I've seen. Some students just use a laptop instead. It's a real shame that more schools don't support students whose handwriting would mean this is the most prudent option.

Examiners are encouraged to mark scripts with difficult to read handwriting. Otherwise the poor Chief Examiner ends up with a pile of horror if they do get escalated as unmarkable. I've never heard of any script (exam paper) not being interpreted eventually. I've personally seen some truly horrible ones but I've persevered. There is an option to enlarge it on the screen and to darken it but the scripts are actual size otherwise.

I don't know if that's reassuring or not but do raise it with the school.

University lecturer here. Illegible scripts get nil points. You cannit mark what you cannot read. Why on earth has the school not sorted it this already? How have they been marking his work? Strange that the pp who marks for 1 exam board has been told to pass illegible scripts, why, just why?

I think it is the different subjects that account for the difference.

OK well I can only speak from my own experience marking GCSE for a very big exam board. We mark only what we can read.

I always presumed this was how it worked too.
But its really worrying that your exam board does but others pass it to others to try and work in teams etc. Why are they different?

Former marker here. I have seen a lot worse than your son’s. I did make every attempt to decipher terrible handwriting but I distinctly remember one which was a series of sloping tightly packed upward strokes that just looked like this - ////////////////// - it may have been genius but I couldn’t read or make any sense of it so they got nil points. We get paid per paper and have hundreds so you can’t treat them like the Dead Sea scrolls.

I can refer illegible scripts. I’ve been marking for 25 years.

I have been marking for 25 years. If I can’t read a script I can refer it-but it rarely happens as I am very good at deciphering poor handwriting.

And I'm on the remaining exam board so we've covered them all between us:)

I’ve been exam marking English for 25 years too and our advice was always to pass on illegible scripts - that’s for OCR, Eduquas, CIE and Edexcel.

I’m a secondary teacher and I’m surprised that this wasn’t flagged up before. These days you don’t need to have a specific learning need to type - it just needs to be your normal way of working. I’ve already switched three of my Year 10 class t typing (English teacher) and my Year 11s had about 11 out of a class of 25 typing by the end. Obviously too late now but make sure it’s in place for the next stage in his education. Re the handwriting thing for examiners - we try very hard to decipher and then pass on to team leader if not possible.

Whereas in both of my papers, I can refer upwards for someone to have another go

Complete fiction about your DCs poor handwriting being passed to three different people to try and decipher. I mark essay subjects for two exam boards and if I can’t read it, I don’t credit it.

My son has dyspraxia and dyslexia, he will be using a computer scribe(he will talk to the computer program) for his GCSE’s, I would have thought the school would have flagged an issue of his writing cannot be understood.