to think these are the worst invigilators ever?

[Kladdkaka]

My daughter has come home from her exams every day this week raging at the invigilators. She says she doesn't think she can get through the 2 week exam period without killing one or the other or both. She says they're like Laurel and Hardy.

Monday they:
-opened and shut the squeaky windows repeatedly

• sat tapping their feet
• one sat rocking on the top of a stack of chairs oblivious to the distraction of what she was doing or the noise it was making
• chatting in whispers through half of the exam
• asking her every 10 minutes or so if she was ok and reminding her that she was entitled to a break if she needed it.
• standing behind her and reading what she was writing over her shoulder.
• generally just being a pain the neck.

Daughter told her teachers who said they would speak to them.

Today:

• only 1 invigilator there
• half the exam clattering around in a cardboard box full of pens
• arsing around with her coat repeatedly causing it to slide up and down a metal rail making a racket
• disappeared out to the room to make herself a cup of tea.
• generally faffing and causing a distraction
• not allowing daughter to have her break because she was on her own.
• daughter handed her paper in at the same time as others, even though she has extra time, because she thought she might kill her if she stayed any longer.

That would drive me fucking bonkers.

That's bad, I would definitly consider complaining, exams are important and invigilators should know this and act appropriately.

Welcome to the world of office work.

As an invigilator who takes my job seriously, I'm appalled.

Leaving the room put your daughter's mark in jeopardy - we are not allowed to leave students unsupervised at any time.

• They should not be speaking to her and it is expressly forbidden in the handbook (for all exam centres) to communicate with other invigilators unless it's about the exam and absolutely necessary

• She should have had her rest breaks (again, against rules not to allow if she has them agreed) and there's no problem with walking up and down the corridor outside, not speaking, so the exam room is still under observation (no one could get in) or just having the rest break inside the room.

But, having re-read your post, it's a failure on behalf of the examinations officer (head of exams) not providing a second invigilator to take your daughter out if there were other candidates in the room.

I specialise in invigilating SEN and special requirements candidates (having had that provision myself when I sat exams) and we always have two invigilators for a large group precisely so we can allow rest breaks etc.

The problem is that exams aren't the norm here. Their teachers set their final grades based on work through out the last 3 years. My daughter however is one of the few doing the IB and the IBO set exams. So the school have had to find 2 people, not the IB teachers to do it. And they've found 2 muppets without the first clue about what it's like to actually sit an exam. grrrr.

Dara OBriain does a funny sketch about inviligilating - teachers playing pacman with each other around the tables, or one sitting at the front while the other stands by the ugliest student, then swapping.

Just being irritating doesn't sound so bad.

Sorry, hit post too early as I'm fuming about this. You should definitely complain, in the first instance to the examinations officer (not the teachers as they don't and shouldn't be debriefing the invigilators), then to the exam board.

If your daughter feels her marks for today and the previous exam have been affected she should also ask the exams officer to contact the examinations board and request special consideration. If the exams officer doesn't want to do this I don't see why you can't ring the board yourself, explain the situation and ask if there's someone you could speak to.

soverylucky I didn't realise they filmed her class :o

Ah, just seen your update. If you're overseas then instead of the board maybe a work with the headteacher after you speak to the person in charge of the IB? I can't find an Internet link to the handbook we use but it's pretty obvious what they should and shouldn't be doing apart from to them.

Definitely your daughter should lodge a special circumstances form with the exam board if she feels she was adversely affected - the sooner this happens the better.

We can't contact the exam board directly. It's the IBO. We have to go through the IB Coordinator in the school, ie her teacher.

Having now had a bitch about it, I suspect being distracted by the nuisance invigilator may have actually benefited her a bit. It meant that she could rage about that instead getting in a complete flap over the actual questions. :o During the mock of the one she did today, she got so stressed with over thinking the question that she failed to write anything at all.

When I did my GCSEs (many moons ago) one of the teachers who was there was a real pain. At one point he sat on the edge of my mates desk and ate a packet of cheese and onion crisps!

You need to contact the IB coordinator about this. Their behaviour is unacceptable. IB teachers can invigilate the exams, I know, I did invigilate an exam today. The only exceptions are you cannot invigilate your own subject or a relative.
If you get no success from the coordinator then send me a pm and I'll try and find out what you should do.

Why can't the IB teachers invigilate? In a school that only offers IB we don't have to pull in some strangers off the street. We can't invigilate our own subjects but there are enough teachers to go around.

To be accredited by the IBO invigilators have to be trained. Usually a 30-minute slide show but still it counts as training. If the invigilators haven't had training then the school has a problem.

If your daughter is still talking about it on a day with no exams, Tuesday, is there a chance she is over-focussing on it?

I'd be angry about most of it, but standing behind her and reading what she's writing is par for the course, I think!

What is an invigilator? I've never even seen this word before!

I'm assuming she did a school based subject on Monday, and then English today, Wednesday and then she'll have Maths tomorrow and Friday.

Panda, are you American? Invigilating is the same as proctoring an exam.

macropront and complexnumber Thanks for the advice. I think they are teachers from elsewhere in the school and they have had training but this is only the schools second year of doing any sort of exam, so they're still learning. I've emailed the co-ordinator and we'll see what happens.

LRDtheFeministDragon watching what they're up to, to ensure they're not cheating is one thing, but I don't think the actual content of what they're writing is anything to do with the invigilator. They could spend the time writing their letters to Santa if they wanted :o. Although on a serious note, standing right behind an autistic student is definately a no-no. She gets seated first to ensure she's in a position where the likelihood of someone passing behind her is reduced to zero. And then the invigilator not only forgets but lurks over her too.

DoubleNegativePanda an invigilator is the person who silently, and with as little disruption as possible, supervisors the exam room and makes sure nobody cheats.

macropront yes she did English today. It's her best subject but also the one she finds the most stressful because she puts so much pressure on herself. She hates maths so will be fairly relaxed tomorrow. I think she did Swedish on Monday, but that may not have been an IB exam as she's also trying to get the Swedish national qualification too (essential requirement for university here)

klad - I see what you're saying. I also think it must be tricky to invigilate - it actually does matter what they are writing, because it they're copying off a bit of paper smuggled in, you kinda need to notice.

But if the invigilator has already been told not to stand behind her, they should not be doing it! There's nothing worse than someone saying they'll make reasonable provision for someone's needs, and then failing to do it, it must be incredibly distracting.

You should never read what a student is writing. If they smuggled a piece of paper in, the invigilator would have to notice in the first couple of minutes, or it would be impossible to prove.

If she is entitled to breaks I would have thought she should be in a different room, she would be in all schools I've worked in.

The Swedish could have been an IB exam, I always get a bit confused with the languages.

On a different note, I am assuming she does Maths Studies. Remind her she will need to put her calculator into degrees and turn diagnostics on after her calculator is reset.

Ah, fair enough, I guess it's different for IB. In most exams it is quite easy to see when someone has paper that's different from what's provided in the room.

YANBU. My DH is a teacher. On two occasions, I've had to invigilate the invigilator. Both times were with children with SN and the SENCO who sat with them.
I had to make sure she didn't feed them information. I am not a teacher. In order that I was allowed to do this, a request had to be put in to the IB foundation or something (we were in Thailand).