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.

This happened to a friend on mine at uni. He had to dictate all his papers to a secretary including any mistakes. Not sure about and actual exam board…

I’m also an examiner and can also read it. It’s a bit annoying when the writing slows you down, but you wouldn’t just give up and give them nothing!

If its that bad he should be given a laptop.
If not i recommend printing writing as clearly as possible, only primary school insist on cursive. As a secondary teacher I encouraged printing if students struggled with cursive.
Examiners do their best to decipher writing

Quite frankly, why on earth did you leave it till now? In the past if handwriting was bad as a teacher I always sorted a laptop for the student. It's quite easy to do

No formal.diagnosis but school can perform an assessment to award exam access arrangements

Don't worry I wasn't pulling you up - only making an observation that very bright types tend to have messy writing.

As an English teacher, it’s not that bad and I’ve seen plenty worse. One thing that helps is writing on every other line in exams. Another is the type of pen used. However, examiners and teachers are used to a wide range of handwriting and you do learn to get your eye in.

My son had permission to use a laptop in his GCSEs and A Levels

I have plenty of students with terrible handwriting. It's only when it's truly illegible that we provide a laptop or if it's indicative of/part of a different or wider issue.

I can read the writing op. You do get used to it and with a whole paper, you can work it out from context usually.

Handwriting does seem to be getting worse over time, simply because people are writing less and less.

My year 10s are currently sitting mocks and I will spend half term marking 30 exam papers. I'd say that 7 or 8 or them will be a hard slog due to handwriting and because I'm an English teacher, it's all essay based so takes a while anyway.

The school should have provided a laptop for exams. This is an exam arrangement that can be “awarded” by the school and requires no external permission or application. No SEN diagnosis is required for a reasonable adjustment like this in exams, the evidence is the handwriting.
With illegible handwriting you can ask the following questions: is the handwriting legible to someone who is not familiar with the candidate’s handwriting? Can the word as a whole be deciphered or can it be guessed through the context?
If typing speed is slower than writing or causing further hindrance then school should have assessed for a scribe but with this arrangement 16 spelling and grammar marks are automatically lost because the candidate has not spelt every word and dictated every punctuation.

sounds obvious but is it any better if he doesn't write in cursive? I know it takes longer but better to write something legible slowly than long answers that can't be deciphered. Otherwise he can at least make an effort to space his words out, leave a line between sentences etc. They can always ask for more paper.

While people are saying it's the examiners job to decipher bad writing, in reality they are paid per paper, so it's really not worth them going above and beyond to puzzle out every single word. My friend's mum used to pay her to do her exam marking for her when she was 14! Examiners are human like everyone else - some are conscientious, others will do the least they can get away with. There are so many examples about papers being regraded and marks changing, often spanning multiple grade boundaries (a friend went from a D to an A on her A level re-mark but missed out on her uni place in the meantime).

Do you really want to risk it when sometimes one or two marks can make all the difference?

It’s too late in the day for typing to be a consideration. I think the cursive is too ingrained - he had handwriting intervention 4x a week at primary for 4 years! Every day I remind him to try and write neater, leave big gaps between words etc. He’s a teenage boy, it’s met with a shrug and “I knooowww”!

When you say "too late in the day"
what year is he in? The decision was only made for my son at the end of Y10/early Y11. So assuming he's not doing them right now it's not too late.

If his teachers can mark his work, then an examiner will be able to mark his exams.

When I have marked in the past and struggled it is passed onto the lead examiner for the paper. They might try and put it in someone else’s pile to give it a go but if not they have to try their best to read it. Ultimately this will disadvantage your son as you have to guess every other word

My DS has dreadful handwriting and the school said that he should use a laptop for his exams but he utterly refused. We repeatedly asked teachers if they could read it for mocks etc and they said ''I can, but I don't know if that's just because I know his writing'.

Anyway, I was very nervous on results day that he would get nothing, but he did well, better than his mocks so I assume the examiners were able to figure it out.

I exam mark GCSE History and we’re just told to mark what we can read. Illegibility is not a criteria to send it for review for the board I mark for. I’m afraid to say that the pay is really bad per question so we can’t spend absolutely ages on one answer.
I’d say going forward, poor handwriting is definitely something to try to get access arrangements for so the child can use a laptop but this is something which needs to happen much earlier than the exam season of Y11.

Following because my son's writing is abysmal! (In his words "it looks like Arabic" 🤦🏻‍♀️😂) School have offered a laptop but he hates using it as it sets him apart from the other kids and he also pointed out that he can't type well either, which is a fair point!

He did use it for a couple of his mocks but he hadn't been told how to set it all out etc. I worry so much because likewise, my lad is bright - but getting his thoughts onto paper is a struggle for him. If he could verbalise his thoughts he'd do brilliantly! (They did offer a scribe too but he's not taken this up yet)

Science marker here too. There is no referring to anyone. We mark what we can read and anything illegible is ignored.

A scribe won’t read. A reader is a separate access arrangement.

I couldn't read my son's writing and was quite concerned about it when he did his exams. However, someone must have been able to read it as he did quite well and nothing had been flagged up. His friend was told to use a laptop because of bad handwriting.

I'm a teacher and an examining marker. I think if there was a massive problem, then the school would have flagged it. Put bluntly, it's in their best interests for your kid to do as well as possible so they're not just going to let the grades slip when an issue can be easily fixed with a laptop.

Maths marker here, there are often candidates who write very stylised numbers eg 4 and 7, they often rush zero making it look like a ft 6. As a marker I have marked a question wrong because of the way a number was written but then saw the same on other pages and went back to alter the mark, but that's a matter of luck.
My final lesson before Study Leave was always on How To Lose Marks Without Really Trying, it can be very frustrating for a marker, I often abuse candidates who are losing marks due to sloppiness!

that's interesting, Ds is year 6 and I was told it was one or the other. he got the extra time and the tracher can check it for legibility and transcribe sections, but he wasn't permitted an actual scribe alongside the extra time

I think pushing them to "just try to write more neatly" at this stage can be counterproductive. They're under so much pressure anyway and anything that slows them getting things down on paper or even using extra mental resources can impact on how much they write to earn the marks. Anything they don't get down they definitely won't get marks for, whereas anything they scribble, they might.

At this point I would just reassure him because the last thing you want is him slowing down or dumbing down his answers. Ours may be an extreme case but DD definitely needed encouragement to still aim high with her writing, not encouragement to slow down or print with the unintended consequence that she oversimplified what she was writing, ran out of time, broke down with the stress of it all or all 3.