To complain - daughter didn’t get her extra time!

[Hamnetsdad]

My Dd, 16, went in to do her English Literature exam today and the invigilator told her she didn’t have the 25% extra time she is entitled to. Dd thinks she had confused her with another student, but as she is autistic, she wasn’t able to explain herself.

I did receive a phone call half an hour into the exam to say Dd wasn’t there - which obviously panicked me! Then they checked again and found her. The exams officer said she may have arrived late (she didn’t). So I suspect the issue may have been the seating plan.

I am really upset as Dd didn’t finish the paper and wasn’t able to articulate herself because of her disability. She didn’t receive any of her extra time.

They will have to report themselves for centre malpractice.
The exams office will be really busy until the post is collected so give them time to reply, and try not to panic. It will be sorted.

She must have - going by the OP. Please do ignore my post, it was my error!

She did sit the exam. At the end of the exam she continued writing because she has extra time and the invigilator told her to stop and said she would report her for continuing to write. Dd said she has extra time and told the invigilator that she was looking at wrong name but wasn’t listened to.

I'm logging off now.

I want to wish you and your daughter all the very best and I hope she can get through this. xx

Don't faff around with the exams officer.

Communicate with the Head of Centre, ie the Head Teacher.

Thank you. I don’t feel too bad about it now. It was an awful shock this morning when I thought she hadn’t turned up to the exam (Dd has history that would make this a concern from a safeguarding point of view) but no harm done in the end. With the extra time, at least she’ll get special consideration now.

I copied the headteacher in to my email.

I'm an EO and if my invigilators did that I'd be very cross.

We use WhatsApp in school to communicate and they always check with me if they aren't sure.

Also the candidate cards on the desk have a coloured sticker on according to the candidates access requirement eg. ET, laptop, reader, scribe

But there is literally no other avenue other than special consideration open to us in the situation you find yourself in.

I hope your DD feels better tomorrow.

That’s outrageous.

I know every school does it differently but where I am, we have laminated cards saying ‘extra time’ that go on the desks of all candidates who are entitled to it. I’d also expect her to have been seated with other students who had the same entitlement, either in a different room or in a particular section of the main exam hall. It’s really really hard to imagine how an individual student with additional time could mistakenly be denied it, several steps would have to go wrong!

I think you mentioned she was in a separate room, was she on her own there with the invigilator or with a few other students?

If you have had no reply this evening, I would personally go into school tomorrow and ask to speak to someone to ensure she gets the extra time for tomorrow’s exam,

@Hamnetsdad I’m an exams officer.
just contact your schools exam officer and outline what happened. They can then apply for special consideration for failure to provide access arrangements. For AQA it’s just an online form they fill in and then the exam board decide if they will apply it. If it’s agreed they will add on a small percentage to her score so you won’t know how much until results are out.

Invigilators are humans and mistakes happen. This is what special consideration is for.

We do same as you. My invigilators would check with me and the coloured stickers on cards tell them too.

I did have one student added late to rest breaks who had her sticker missing but the team checked with me so all good.

Eh, that makes it even worse. how did they manage to not know who she was and not give her extra time if she was in a separate room?!

@DaffodilGreen i have done and they’ve applied for special consideration. I suspect the small percentage won’t be equivalent to the marks she would have gained, as she missed a question as a result. The invigilator is human but at the start of the exam she marked an absent student who sat behind my Dd as present. The attendance officer then called me to tell me Dd was absent.
At that point the exams officer went into the room to verify DD’s identity and confirm who she was. At that point the invigilator should have been aware of the mistake in the register and amended it.

Despite this, the invigilator still confused dd for the other student at the end of the exam and told her she was not allowed extra time. She then said she would report her for cheating if she continued to write. Dd said she did have extra time and asked the invigilator to check and she did not.

Mistakes do happen, but this was sheer incompetence.

There were other students in there with Dd. There is a student on roll who hasn’t attended school for a while but has still been entered for exams apparently. She sits behind Dd in the separate room. It seems the invigilator decided Dd was absent (despite doing a register and Dd being in the correct seat) and did not amend the register even after the exams officer confirmed that Dd was present.

I agree. I had 25 percent extra time for my exams plus needing to sit in room of my own (which unfortunately in school is translated to be in a room with the half dozen plus other students who need adjustments, but still better than in giant echoey hall with hundreds of others).

I can imagine an invigilator being confused if supervising hundreds (especially as those invigilators tended to be barely trained volunteer parents), but you'd have to mess up pretty bad when you're only looking after a max of 20 students in a room. Especially not to double check when student states they have extra time.

Not much to say expect you're doing a good job chasing it up, and reassuring dd you're sorting it without getting her involved. She just needs to focus on her other exams now. Just tell her it'll be fine, continue to push the school until they do their thing, and let her know any good news once it comes.

Mistakes do happen, but this was sheer incompetence.
Yes. I'm sorry this happened to your daughter. They will have to report their malpractice though in order to get spec con, so it might make them take more care.

I’d be taking legal action. It’s sheer incompetence.

I work at a college and you're not being unreasonable at all and seems there has been a mistake. Raise the issue with the head

Come on? People make mistakes and this can be rectified. I work at a college and exams time can be unbelievably stressful to organise and mistakes happen.

My ds head of department at college did actually organise ds extra time but told him they'd sort it just to keep me happy

I also agree to complain.

For a start they've not only affected her by stressing her out before the exam but also with lack of extra time.

It sounds as if the invigilator was inexperienced and may not be well trained. A lot of schools have been short of invigilators this year. I don't know how they work but at our school the same invigilators always work in the smaller rooms and those entitled to reader and scribe have the same invigilator throughout. I work in a room normally with one other invigilator and 5 students so we straight away knew 4 had extra time. We have an extra one now who broke their arm so Exam Officer immediately applied and got extra time this week . They will give your daughter special consideration and hopefully she did well in her previous Eng Lit exams. There is always room for some human error. I worked in another school and they mis calculated the end time of the exam and sent them all out a few minutes early. The time is up on the board and no student commented and nor did any other invigilators notice until they had all left!

Can you explain the legal action that can be taken please?

But these mistakes and errors could cost a child a place at university or as in op daughters case knock her confidence and stop her from doing the rest of her exams or doing them to the best of her abilities. I had a reader/scribe at school and was in a room with her and an invigilator and if I’d not had that I’d really have struggled. I practised loads too pre exams both prelims and main then higher. it’s hard dictating so I don’t blame your daughter for not wanting that.

hope you get the outcome you want for your daughter and she does well in all her other exams

This happened to my dd in her very first exam and she has been given special consideration for that paper.

All been fine since. Definitely flag it.