Schools desperately short of exam invigilators

[noblegiraffe]

"The National Association of Exam Officers (NAEO) is set to publish advice tomorrow to help schools struggling to recruit enough trained officers. More staff are needed to oversee the first GCSE and A-level exams to be sat in two years, with a snap poll suggesting that 83 per cent of centres are still experiencing a deficiency.
But Jugjit Chima, chief executive officer of the NAEO, has warned that some schools and colleges are "stuck", having already implemented contingency plans, such as staggered starts to exams, but still not having enough staff to oversee next month's exams."

The suggestion is that admin staff and dinner ladies could be asked to invigilate.

Geoff Barton of the ASCL commented that part of the issue is that invigilators don't want to stand in exam halls packed with children who may well have covid (no requirement to isolate) and the government should reinstate free testing for schools, at least for the exam period to provide reassurance.

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/gcses-2022-schools-desperate-over-exam-invigilator-shortage

There are also serious concerns that desperation will lead to unsuitable candidates being hired, and an increase in exam malpractice.

www.tes.com/magazine/news/secondary/gcses-2022-crisis-fears-over-invigilator-shortage

You radio for someone to come and take them to the loo.

And we ran out exams last year in lessons, not in the halls. Some were at home (proctored) as indicating with covid. Last year was not fun.

@KittyMcKitty who ? I'm assuming you have spare staff who can just drop everything ? Even our head teaches so not sure who we'd call.

I don’t know any school which has not run an exam since 2019!

Anyway my response was to the poster who asked how we had managed to invigilate during the pandemic 🤷‍♀️

I am genuinely interested! We are a bit stuck this year too and trying to find solutions. Don't have enough scribes at the moment - now that does need proper training and is really hard to do right.

@KittyMcKitty I know many (all private). Makes me v v mad so won't comment further.

We have an invigilator in the corridor (usually the exams officer) who can step in if any room needs help.

You call the exams officer who has to be available during the exam. Your secondary school head teaches? Who would you call in school if you needed on call during non exam times?

@OctopusSay that makes sense. Our school is massive and exam rooms are spread all over so not as simple for us. Poor exams officer though - must not get a break during the season ! It's such a tough job.

@KittyMcKitty we have an SLT rota. But if they are busy we don't have anyone - we deal with it ourselves or get nearby colleagues support. Not always ideal !
And yes, our heads have always taught. Because they want to keep their classroom practice but also because they need to. We are short of staff !

I have no knowledge of private schools.

my own state educated children sat more exams for their canx GCSEs and A levels then if they’d say their actual exams.

at my work we ran 3 rounds of formal exams last school year. The year before we ran mocks and then in the summer ran data gathering exams for year 10. My experience is pretty much the same as for all state schools I know.

I teach in NI, so slightly different in that we have very few independent schools.
Teachers here only supervise internal exams, gcse / a-levels are externally invigilated. It's not part of our contract to cover them.
The same issue is coming up with exam marking, the money is pathetic. They need to realise that people need to feel valued to take on the extra stress.

@KittyMcKitty 😊 yup, state schools did that. Not all private ones did - some did before I'm jumped on ! One school v close to me went from 30% A star at A level to 100% last year. They have it on their advertising hoarding. They did no exams at all. Just used 'evidence'. I tutored one of their students. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

The same issue is coming up with exam marking, the money is pathetic. They need to realise that people need to feel valued to take on the extra stress.

I didn't find it particularly stressful and I didn't feel not valued. I always got thanked and told I was appreciated. It's just that they had so many students in different rooms because of educational issues, behavioural issues, health issues, etc, that the amount of invigilators they required stretched their budget. So to cut costs they cut our hours. It just became pointless going in to earn less than £15 for 1.5hrs work with all the associated costs.

Exam concessions such as rest breaks and separate rooms have spiralled and this causes onward pressure too.

This isn’t the only factor but more and more students are requesting these concessions now. Once upon a time most 16 year olds would never have demanded special treatment - you just filed into the hall, wrote your exams and filed out again. That’s not to say they weren’t anxious, it was just not a thing to ask for different treatment. In fact some people would have seen it as slightly unfair.

@ClaudiusTheGod they do have to prove the need for this though. Not just ask. We need medical stuff or testing for special considerations to be granted. Otherwise they'd all be wanting them !

Yes it has become ridiculous

Actually not us that need the information, it's OFQUAL. Need documented evidence the student requires something different and it can take months/years to get this. It's not just I want (or it shouldn't be !)

I always thought that the amount of invigilators required depended on the amount of candidates?
We do usually have someone available at all times to pick up the phone as it patches through to other staff members in various offices.

As Geoff Barton says in the article linked in the OP, teachers shouldn't be asked to invigilate external exams as part of the T&C of their employment.

We are, however, at my school, asked to pitch in and help with invigilating internal exams which includes mocks and exams done for TAGs (which were mostly done in lessons). We require far more external invigilators during proper exam season.

@mumsneedwine 10 rooms is a lot! I work in a school with an above average number of students with access arrangements and we run the main hall, a large room with mainly just ET and a few group readers (so share 1 GR) and 1 poss 2 small rooms with individual readers / scribes and other more complex arrangements in.

The number of invigilators required is dependent on number of students. You can have a room with just one invigilator in with the Exams Officer acting as a roving invigilator. The EO would also collect registers.

all the rules are in the JCQ regs which are online.

We are no longer having any proper invigilated exams for any year groups bar public exams now because we have a) no invigilators b) not enough rooms c) no money.

The only hall based exams last year and up until now were BTecs. The TAGs were in class assessments.

We are a split site school with exams across three buildings. EO can't be in three buildings at once!

We did lots and lots of internal exams but in classrooms. In fact last year's cohort were tested to within an inch of their lives. I felt sorry for them. But nobody should be using the past two years' results to market their school.

Oh FFS, who’s still afraid of bloody COVID?