I didn't expect to find myself asking for advice like this...
DS1 is currently sitting his GCSEs. Today at around 4pm his school phoned both my wife and myself to tell us he had missed an exam. We both said that he didn't have an exam today and suggested the school might be getting him mixed up with another pupil with the same surname. It turns out the exam board (AQA) issued a revised exam timetable for DS1 in February but the school failed to pass it on to him. It has sat in teacher's folder for the last 3 months. The timetable they did give him was missing three papers, one of which was today.
I rushed DS1 into school and he sat the paper but he was starting over 4.5 hours late on a 1 hour paper. I pointed out to the school that their failure has undermined his ability to prepare for this exam. They brushed this off saying he will have been revising in class. However, my son has pointed out to me that they have been revising for Module 2 of this exam and this was Module 1, which he is retaking because he failed it last year. He also now knows he has another exam on Thursday which he was not expecting and which is also a retake. He now has less than 2 days to revise the entire Module 1 syllabus for this subject.
The school is unclear whether my son will get any marks at all for this module. Even if he does, the maximum uplift under "special consideration" is 5%. My son feels this is grossly inadequate. There were two 4-mark questions on subjects that he knew he had to revise. He was unable to answer these questions at all. There was also a 6-mark question on a subject he intended to revise. He believes the lack of revision cost him at least 2 marks on this question. Overall he believes that this has cost him at least 15%-20% of the marks on this paper. If he is right, even if AQA accept his paper and give him 5% extra (which appears to be the best case scenario) he will end up being penalised for the school's failure, possibly being knocked down a grade or more from the grade he would have got if the school had got it right.
I will clearly be taking this up with the school once exams are over. However, I can't see anything in the regulations that covers this kind of situation. Does anyone have any experience? How will AQA handle this? Is there anything I should do?