AIBU to ask current or former GCSE examiners what happens with illegible handwriting?

[Hadsuchahardday]

My son is currently doing his GCSEs. Although his handwriting is joined and cursive it is truly illegible and no doubt will be worse under time pressure. It is just a series of loops; letters such as a do not join at the top, tall letters are not particularly tall, r veers off at a diagonal. His spelling is also terrible which makes deciphering even harder. We’ve been told that exam papers are scanned and blown up and that different examiners mark each question. If the writing cannot be read, it is passed on to somebody more senior but what happens then? What if 4 people look at it and no one can read it? Will he be marked on what can only be read? He is a bright boy and could verbally answer the questions well, his predicted grades are generally 7-8 with a 6 and 9 for some. Answers from examiners greatly appreciated.

can he not type?

Photo example

How are his teachers marking his class/homework and test papers? They must be managing in order to give predicted grades, surely?

My son had this issue and got a reasonable adjustment to type in essay heavy subjects.

I'm going back a bit now, but when I used to be an examiner, if you really couldn't decipher the script, you had to send it back to the board. We were told (in those days) that the Board had a special office where people had the job of deciphering the undecipherable.

I assume that isn't showing whole lines - when writing is tricky to read it's a lot easier once you get your eye in by going over a whole sentence (I occasionally have to read very old documents).

I assume if he's been predicted good grades and not given a scribe or computer to type answers his teacher's must find his writing okay. He will have done mocks before the real ones.

My son had this problem. He was assessed through son was given extra time and a scribe. Have a conversation with school. Although if he is sitting them now then it is too late

I'm an exams officer. Candidates are usually flagged to senco and asessed for legibility of handwriting and then given a laptop for exams.

If he hasn't been offered a laptop I would be onto school about it.

Why is he squeezing two lines of writing into one line of the paper? Wouldn’t he be better off writing a bit bigger?

Interesting question my son is year 10 and I can’t read his writing but school haven’t raised any concerns although he has just been given 25% extra time.

Nothing that useful to add but two of my kids had the most awful writing, I can’t believe they didn’t lose marks on exams because of it. Every single parent teacher meeting started with a rant from the teacher about how awful their handwriting was. My daughters but have unusually neat handwriting so I don’t know why theirs is so bad.

I don’t think your sons is too bad tbh. I can mostly read it so presumably when an examiner can see a whole page of it they should be able to decipher it.
Is his presentation ok otherwise.

One of my kids that wrote badly also had very poor presentation which must have lost him even more marks. It was frustrating but neither of them seemed to care about it. They were bright so it hasn’t hurt them in the long run at all but I can t help feel sorry for whoever had to mark their papers. One is a Doctor and the other has a PhD in a physics subject. The one that is a Doctor has reverted to writing in capitals. It’s childlike but perectly readable.

It wasn’t a matter of poor fine motor skills as they were perfectly capable when playing games online or when painting war hammer.

I second the advice from @WhatAMarvelousTune. For the subjects my son could not use a computer for he was told to write big to make it more legible.

Some students are provided with the following,

Exam papers in certain colours

Extra time

Laptops to type

A scribe (a one to one person who reads the exam paper & will write exactly what the student dictates)

All the above exceptions will have been agreed during the mock exams

I also read old docs and back in the day used to mark handwritten exams. You do "get your eye in" and you can do a lot from guessing the sense. Examiners mark so many answers and students write similar things so that you can guess whether its "possession" or "position," say.

What's actually stopping me from reading the snippet you posted quickly is the quality of the image. I can make out a lot of the words (he's writing about music, yes?) But he'd benefit from not writing two lines to a line on the paper.

DS has awful writing and now uses a laptop in exams at college but it wasn't picked up on in time for GCSE
He scored lower than expected in the 2 most essay heavy subjects he did and his school suggested a remark for both - his marks went up by 8 marks on 1 and 6 on another and I am convinced his handwriting played a part in it

My son is in year 8, and this has recently been raised as a concern. His school is giving him 6 weeks of handwriting "intervention" - and if that doesn't help - then he will be able to do his exams on a laptop.

I currently mark for two exam boards and if we can't read it they don't get the marks. There's no passing it on anywhere for anyone else to look at. You just mark whatever you can decipher. I mark a Science subject so I can't say if it's any different for essay subjects. If his handwriting is a problem due to anything diagnosable (e.g. hyper mobility or dyspraxia) then school really ought to have looked at providing a computer or scribe. If he just rushes and/or is messy for no good reason then no adjustments would be possible and he'll have to make an effort to write more clearly. The school should have discussed this with you long before his exams. I wish him the best of luck!

This should have been flagged by the school for appropriate help to be put in place.

My son from year 9 was a full time laptop user as they couldn’t read his writing.

Exam markers work in teams so in the first instance if one marker can't decipher a paper it will be passed to other members of the team to look at, and then on to the team leader if necessary. If they're still struggling then the exam board may pass the paper back to the school so that teachers who are familiar with the child's work can have a go at de-coding it - this usually works well. If a paper is illegible they go to very great lengths to mark it - it won't just be cast aside. (My closest friend is an Eng Lit marker for WJEC so I asked her about this last year when I was worried about one of my kids doing GCSEs with dreadful handwriting).

I’m an examiner and can read most of it. But as a previous poster said - tell him to write between the lines (not on the line). Thinner pen might help. His teachers should have flagged it ages ago if his writing was unintelligible.

It is their job to decipher it. They will do so.

Also I have seen worse than your son’s and the examiners deciphered those.

Take him pen shopping too - finding a comfortable, fine-nibbed, non-smudgy pen really helped. (buy 10 when you find one that does the trick!)

In the middle of exams there is no way to get a laptop or scribe now.

I do think teachers get their eye in. My son types but a couple of his teachers wondered why because they never had any trouble deciphering his handwriting. I literally don't understand this, he has so many missing letters I don't see how they managed it.

I think it probably helps that they often know what key words they are looking for.

Has he seen an ed psych, is he SEN? If his handwriting is poor due to SEN he may be entitled to extra time and the use of a computer in exams.

My DC is taking GCSEs at the moment and this is exactly how’s it happened for them. They were put onto a laptop about 4 months ago. The school should have been on top of this.