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Original poster

Extra time in exams

27 replies

CloudsAndTrees · 21/05/2013 20:55

Hoping there will be some secondary school teachers or knowledgable people around that can help me.

My ds has Aspergers, is in Y8, and has been been assessed by an Ed Psych as having a well below average processing speed. He does well academically though and is doing well at school.

I have spoken to the SENCO at his school, she says she knows he will need extra time in exams, but he hasn't been allowed the extra time for the exams he took today, or yesterday. I'm told this is because they need to gather evidence of his need for extra time to present to the examination boards when he does his GCSEs.

I was slightly miffed but ok with this when they first told me, I figured they knew what they were doing, and ds was ok with it too. But now I have a child who is upset that he hasn't been able to finish any of the four exams he has done so far because he knows he won't get a grade as high as he deserves, and the more I think about it, the more it seems unfair.

Do they really need to disadvantage him in some exams to prove he needs it in others? Is there some other way they could obtain this evidence? What sort of evidence do they actually need? I'd have thought the Ed Psych report would be enough.

How unreasonable would I be to insist that he is graded on the work he managed to finish, rather than on the exam overall?

Sorry for all the questions!

OP posts:
Original poster
CloudsAndTrees · 21/05/2013 21:09

Thanks for the response.

They are end of year internal exams, bit they are done in class groups. They have gone completely off timetable for exam week though, and the school does make a big deal of its end of year exams. It's definitely not classroom based assessments.

It's interesting to know that evidence could be gathered another way, especially as presumably all schools use the same exam boards. You may be right that they might not have wanted to single him out too much by making him stay at the end of normal time, but they did say they he would get extra time for some exams though. I'm expecting him to have it tomorrow, so I'm not sure that is their line of thinking.

OP posts:
funchum8am · 21/05/2013 21:02

I am a secondary head of faculty but not a Senco. At most state schools they do need to prove that pupils cannot finish exams in the time given because of their SEN, and a clear way of proving that would be based on prior exam series where they had under performed when not given extra time. It is not the only way though. At my school all the pupil's teachers would be asked to give examples of classroom based assessments (rather than whole year exams sat in the exam hall) where the pupil had not finished despite working throughout, and where grades were below what the teacher thought they were capable of. But we don't do any exam style whole year tests until year 10 anyway so we couldn't do it that way.

However if your son is doing "exams" in year 8 does that mean classroom based assessments in normal lesson time, or full exams in the hall? Because if the format, it would be impossible to arrange the extra time without singling your son out at such and early stage (ie him not leaving at the end of the lesson but staying for his extra time, and possibly then missing break or having a break later when his friends are back in the next lesson.). So maybe the school have decided this way is less difficult. I would contact the head of year or form tutor and ask for their rationale.