GCSE exam finished early. What can I do?

[CAMHShelp]

DDs GCSE exam was 1 hour and 45 mins. The invigilator asked the kids if they had finished to which DD replied yes, as she had answered all the questions (ASD) but planned to use remain 20 mins to check answers. They immediately took the paper away and ended the exam early as she was the last one to stop writing.
I have made a complaint to the school but they are being dismissive and fobbing me off.
What can I do?

I was an invigilator until fairly recently.
Students/pupils are assessed robustly as to whether they qualify for extra time.
They absolutely don't have to use this time if they don't need any/all of it.
They indicate to the invigilator by raising their hand that they wish to finish and leave.

@Cesarina- they don’t have to take it under the regulations but some schools insist they do. They do at one of the schools I work at and they very very strongly recommend it at the other, hence the having to sign a document if they don’t want to take it. If a pupil never takes all of their extra time it makes a bit of a mockery of the whole system.

I have had very many instances whereby students have been allocated extra time but don't use it.
And you do really often wonder if the extra time has been awarded unecessarily.
If schools are insisting that the extra time awarded has to be taken in its entireity, then they are very definitely going against the regulations.
But asking a student to sign a "disclaimer" is agood idea and protects the student and the institution.

i work in the Exams Office of a sixth form college and have some experience at schools. This shouldn’t happen, but mistakes do sometimes happen. If this happened in one of our exams we would expect to inform the exam board and apply for special consideration. It would depend on the board how they would look at it but we would definitely give the investigator extra training. The main exam boards require yearly training and updates so this should not happen.

We do allow candidates to leave after the key time has passed but they request to finish early, we would never ask them and their leaving time is written on the seating plan as a record.

I suggest you email the Exams Officer and Head of Centre and explain what happened and ask them to apply for Special Consideration and to confirm it will not happen again.

Or ask for a meeting to explain but this is their busiest time of the year so they will probably struggle to commit to that.

Hope it gets sorted.

I also want to know, why didn’t other invigilators stop this. Is your child in a smaller room rather than main hall so only one invigilator?

where I work we have a good supportive team and if someone makes a mistake there is someone there to notice before the kids even realise.

most schools insist children stay for the full published time of exam. I’ve seen kids sleep for the exam and then in last 5 mins they whizz through what they can.

If there are fewer than 30 candidates you can have one invigilator although probably less likely for a gcse science subject.

I have also seen a girl have a nap mid exam then wake up and do some more.

I’m a teacher. They’re fobbing you off because they’re in the wrong and you have a case. They are absolutely not allowed to finish an exam early. The rules are, everyone sits there, with their paper, for the full amount of time. This should NOT have been allowed. I’d definitely follow it up.

You can leave after an hour according to the centralised rules.
However many schools (sensibly imo) don't permit this and make everyone stay to the end.

No, exam invigilators are not allowed to stop a GCSE exam early just because all students say they are finished.
According to JCQ (Joint Council for Qualifications) regulations, which govern GCSE exams in the UK:

• Candidates must be given the full amount of time allocated for the exam.
• Even if all students appear to have finished early, the exam must continue until the scheduled end time.
• Invigilators are required to follow this strictly to ensure fairness and consistency across all exam centres.

If an exam was stopped early, that would be a breach of regulations, and it should be reported to the exam board for investigation. This might put the validity of the exam at risk.

As I said I suspect this was Biology from Tuesday and there are different start and end times for this based on Triple and Combined Science

If they are in the same room and the school operates the same seat for each exam rule then the combined science and triple science are dotted around.

therefore an annoucement will be made for combined to stop writing the invigilator goes around collecting the combined papers while triple still works. Once the combined papers are collected they go and leave the triple to work.

the above I think is plausible. OP needs to tell the school. They will investigate if the above is found Special Consideration applied for and move on. Given she had finsihed and was just checking that would IMO probably correct it anyway.

The other worse scenario is that she was given the combined paper (again it happens) as that is harder to correct

No she did not communicate that (due to her ASD) but she also did not have extra time. This was during the allotted 1hr 45mins. 20 mins before the end of the exam and 15 mins after usual staff home time.

They were all sitting the same biology foundation paper.

So @CAMHShelp was it Biology as it sounds as if it was

as I said I suspect the combined issue kicked in and a mistake was made. Follow up and if confirmed then request they apply for special consideration

Biology triple finishing with time to spare is normal and I think it would be the amount of marks she would stop

I didn’t know this but it was the class TA plus two others.

Absolutely this!

It's a serious breach.

I'd write to the exam board and COPY in the school. Ask them to advise you within x days what the proposed remedy to this is. I suspect it will come under special consideration if your daughter is close to a grade boundary.

If you write just to the school.... They won't want to contact the exam board... You said they'd already been dismissive.

When my children were doing GCSEs it was in the rules that they could leave early after a certain minimum amount of time, has that been banned this year?

Complain to the school, but also explain to DD to sit it out until the end. Sometimes when you're sitting there thinking the answer to something you were struggling with, or the fact that you've done something wrong, suddenly dawns on you. I definitely had some last minute moments of inspiration in my GCSE Chemistry paper when I sat at the end and just thought about some of the questions again.

You know Mumsnet, never react normally when there's an option to go nuclear 😂

And it was triple science foundation not combined?

I’d be grateful if you could give the page reference for that, I can’t find it in the JCQ ICE.

https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/JCQ-Instructions-for-conducting-examinations-2024FINALaccessible.pdf

(edited to add - that’s to @Allsorted1 - quote didn’t work)

Just checked with my old school and this is certainly not the case there. The only teachers not allowed in the room are the ones whose subject is being examined. External invigilators were always DRB checked but never allowed to be in an exam room without a teacher. Do teachers not actually have to do invigilation at your school then?

Why??

There are incompetent invigilators as well as incompetent lawyers, surgeons and nurses!

For the umpteenth time on this thread - there is no point in contacting either the Exam Board or JCQ directly. They are both busy enough without trying to deal with complaints from candidates or their parents, many of which would be petty grievances from people who don’t understand the regulations and weren’t there.

All issues must be dealt with through the Examinations Officer and Head of Centre.

@Mushypeasandchipstogoit seems that school
need to re read the regs https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Notice_to_Centres-The_people_present_24_FINAL.pdf

Don’t the whole nation sitting that exam do it at the exact time? Therefore they should all be sat there until the end of the allotted time? I don’t think this is allowed whether people had finished or not! I remember doing mine and you just had to sit there