School's refusing to print exam papers

[BarkingSmith]

My child's school has decided to stop printing exam papers for students. Are there any other secondary schools either in the borough or outside who are taking the same action?
Please help.

Eh, so how are they supposed to do the exam? Or are they all computer based?

Hi there. Do you mean the past papers that the student need to access for revision?

I don't know if our school will print them out. They advise that the pupils do it, and send links to the various websites, but the inference is that the pupils will print them at home.

Have you approached the school directly?

Presumably they are practice papers?

Are they otherwise available online for you to print at home?

Are you talking about past papers? I'm not sure I understand otherwise.

I think it's common to either charge for a set of past papers or link to the site to print at home.

If it is past papers then i get why they don’t print them. It will be massively expensive for the school and they can usually be found online. You can buy books of past papers too i think.

We just printed past papers ourselves.

Actually we went further than that. When they gave science questions to do for homework they printed them 2 pages to a sheet to save paper. This was too small for DD, so we ended up printing out homework questions ourselves full size too. y11 is expensive on paper and ink.

I printed all my past papers in sixth form. Probably cost about £30 across the two years by buying school printer credits. Small enough for (most) families to be able to absorb the cost, but too much for a school to do the same for around 350 students.

I work in a school where this happens - we also condense the papers we do print into small size to save paper/ink.

The students are able to print with their own printing credit or at home.

If you're a low income family struggling to cover the costs (especially if you're eligible for pupil premium) contact the school and ask if they can help. If not, the exam board websites all have them available to print. Education budgets are massively stretched at the moment.

What help are you looking for OP?Its common to buy past papers where I am.

I used to get Past Papers from amazon (the books of them). Any we used in school were to be returned at the end of the lesson and not to be written on.

Schools do not print out the exam papers for the actual GCSE tests - the exam boards do that and they are delivered to schools in sealed packaging, so this has got to be about past/practise papers.

Printing all the past papers for all students for all subjects would be a seriou burden on the school reprographics department.

Typical exam papers usually around 20 - 30 pages. Say, 5 papers per subject, 10 subjects per student, call it a small secondary with 200 students in the year...

25510*200=250000 sheets of paper. Add cost of staples and time taken to print them, sort them, distribute them... it's a huge burden at a very busy time of year.

If you have a computer at home you don't even need to print them out yourself. Student reads the question on the screen, writes 1a) in the margin of their A4 lined paper, away they go.

Just make sure that your child knows/finds out which exam board and which specification they are doing for each subject, so they are doing the correct papers! Most exam boards will have a selection of past papers and mark schemes publicly available on their websites, although the websites can be a bit confusing in their layout sometimes.

YABU in criticising the school for not doing this. School budgets are under massive pressure and have been falling, this will be a money saving exercise, students will be able to print their own out at home or by using their own account at school ( if you have PP status you will be able to get the school to do this for you though.

Cuts in funding mean that more and more schools will be doing things like this.

It's going to get much worse.

Our schools didnt either i bought books or Dds printed them off would cost the school a fortune to print off papers for every subject for every child they need a few to practise

Surely this is up to you as a parent to sort out. They can't print out for every child for every subject. You can purchase online or borrow and print them off other pupils.