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.

We had some cases where the problem didn't show up until the candidate reached the stage of having to write under pressure in their first prelim/mock.

I did have one awful case with a junior pupil that I can't go into in full. Suffice to say that I put piece of imaginative writing to the bottom of my marking pile because the handwriting was so bad. When I finally deciphered it, I took it to the pupil's pastoral teacher, so disturbing was the content.

The pupil is now an adult and unlikely to see the light of day again.

It really is worth trying to make writing reasonably legible. Some years ago I examined for a different type of exam. When I had to decipher bad writing I could feel myself getting progressively more bad tempered, and I had to work hard to tell myself that it mustn't affect my attitude to the final mark I awarded. But I wouldn't like to swear that I completely succeeded.

Did you know Occupational Therapists can assess handwriting? I didn’t until my eldest was seen at the age of 16. I honestly thought she was just being careless and had messy handwriting, until she had a formal OT handwriting assessment and scored very poorly on the DASH test. In her case it had been flagged up by the school though. She ended up being allowed to use a word processor (laptop) for her exams on the advice from OT. Some areas allow self-referral which makes access a bit easier too.

Yep! Science marker here too. I have never passed on something I can’t read, they just don’t get the mark. Exam marking is very time consuming and pretty poorly paid for the hours we put in. Also we don’t mark full papers these days, just individual questions which are uploaded so each exam paper can potentially be marked by several different examiners. I have seen much worse than your son’s handwriting so I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure the school would have sorted alternative arrangements if they had been concerned.

Definitely this! 😂
A few ‘Oh FFS’ have been uttered from my office during exam season. The more grumpy it has made me, the less inclined I am to be generous.

Hi. As someone else said, the examiner flags it to the board and someone else with experience of deciphering poor handwriting looks at it. At a very quick glance, however, I can decipher at least some of this so I think your son will be fine.

Don't worry. The teachers have said they can read it. He will have had several teachers across his subjects and if they couldn't read it (in mocks, for example) he would have been referred to use a laptop in lessons as a normal way of working so he could use one or a scribe in his exams.
Think of exam boards as having different tiers of examiners. If examiner 1 can't read it,it would be passed to a group leader, then someone else. Once, in my 20 years of teaching thousands of students, I had the exam board (for English) contact our school and ask if anyone at our school could read the handwriting of a student. Their English teacher could and was asked to transcribe the student's papers and submit them.

I wouldn't put that writing anywhere near the category of 'illegible'. What you've shared is a blurry photo of a snippet in isolation, but I don't think most examiners would struggle to read an essay written like that as when you're reading actual sentences, your eye makes sense of it much better than it would from the picture you've posted out of context.

I find this fascinating, do you just print everything with none of the letters joined up? I can't imagine not joining the letters of words together when I write and really struggle when I have to print things out.

They probably sent them to a pharmacist 🤣

Cursive is a curse.

Why anyone writes like this is 🤯

Can your DS read his own writing @Hadsuchahardday

I'm pretty good - I worked with illegible men for long enough, but all the swirls and loops...🤦🏻‍♀️

I hope he gets the results he needs and has worked for,

If it is truly illegible they can type it.

Students with poor handwriting should be picked up ideally before year10 and exam arrangements for their usual way of working be put in place.

Some students have laptop or scribe for eg (I support students with exam arrangements in my job). Also having a scribe isn't all that great as it's a skill to dictate your work that does drain exam time (even with extra time).

Yes. The OP's son should be fine, but those who need a scribe really need to be able to practise with the scribe, particularly if the scribe is also reading for the candidate.

That’s better than my handwriting. My dd has dyspraxia and I suspect I have too. Somehow they do read most handwriting

I suspect they sent it to the class teacher to decipher!

I work in a university. If I can't read what the student has written then I can't give them the marks.

If his writing is deemed unreadable his school should have allowed him use of IT so he can type his answers.

GCSE examiners are pretty good, but I am shocked his school have not requested this if that bad.

It's interesting the different responses from examiners. I'm an examiner as well, in humanities, for 4 or 5 different papers, though all for the same board. We mark full papers not question items, and we can't pass up papers for illegibility. About once per season I get something really tough to read. I've always flagged it to my team leader, and always been told 'just do your best and if it's absolutely illegible, give it 0'.

Having said that in this example it's not illegible. It would slow me down and be annoying, but I can decipher it.

Hopefully this is a diminishing problem as it's easier and easier to switch a child to typing. It would be well worth asking about this for sixth form OP, it can take a real load off an untidy writer who's probably spent the last 11 years being told to just try harder or print.

We went to one RG uni where a student said they had not handwritten a single uni exam, it was all typing, and in work they are very likely to be typing almost exclusively. I think Handwritten exams at uni are still common elsewhere though.

I don’t know the answer, but I would say that indecipherable handwriting doesn’t seem to have stopped most doctors passing exams and qualifying.

Part of my last job involved reading medical and nursing records, some of which were very badly written, however, as a Nurse, I knew the context of the records and this made it much easier to work out what was being said. I would imagine if an examiner is managing a set of papers from one subject, then they will know what answers they are looking for, so the context should make it a bit easier to decipher ( hopefully)

He should be typing. You don't need SEND to be eligible for that exam concession. I'm surprised his teachers didn't suggest it as it is very straightforward to sort out. If he does any A levels that require longer written responses speak to the SENCo about him having a device in exams.

Changed days..we were told if the writing wasn’t legible, only what was legible would get marks. No examiner wasted time on papers they couldn’t read since writing is a basic skill. We didn’t have computers back then.

I think it's a bit late now for your ds but my son has dyspraxia and at the very start of senior school he has been learning to touch type, it's already agreed all in school and external exams he will type, because it'll be the norm within normal lessons and school testing, the exam boards will be OK with him typing. Why on earth haven't the school got on top of this. I can't believe it's just coming up now.. how have they marked his work in the past!? I'd speak to them ASAP (senco) and see what can be done