Using rub-out pens in exams?

[weekendalmostover]

I have an exam next week, at my local FE college, and the tutor has told us not to use rub-out pens because the ink can disappear if it gets hot. Is that so? Do schools discourage their use in exams too, for the same reason? I know they use friction, but I'm less sure if heat, without friction, would have the same effect.

They are not permitted by the exam boards.

do NOT use erasible pen
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2448693/Council-clerk-Patricia-Bell-stole-160k-forging-cheques.html

Photocopying does not make the inj disappear, heat does. You can get it all back by popping in the freezer though.

Ds is in yr 8, is on the autistic spectrum and has been using Frixion pens since year 5.

I'm going to have to start weaning the little perfectionist off them, aren't I?

But to photocopy a page or scan it uses heat.

Many exam boards scan the answers in and sand them to the moderators.

Don't use them.

Regardless of whether you can get it back or not by freezing, I can't see many exam boards freezing exam scripts.

Hmm it might be an idea to start weaning him off if not being able to use them will cause an issue for him. School exams aside, there may well be a lot of documentation in the workplace that you can't use these for. It might be easier if he could either switch between the two or just cross an error out with a single line. That's probably easier said than done with ASD and a case of perfectionism though.

Huh, how weird. I never knew this! I thought it was just so that they could see what you'd written and decided to cross out.

Hang on, does this mean normal fountain pens/berol handwriting pens which can be erased using one of those double ended white eraser pens, or the new ones which are supposed to be able to be rubbed out with a normal rubber?

Bertie, I use the Frixion pens, so that is what I was meaning. They have a special rubber on the end, which rubs the ink away using friction.

My DCs use them at school too, and like Clay, my DS1 is a perfectionist who gets very upset if he can't obliterate his mistakes. His confidence at writing improved hugely when he started using them. He loves doing his homework on the word processor for the same reason. Unfortunately, it looks like neither are going to help him in future exams!

A couple of years ago lots of the children in my class at the time were using rub out pens. One weekend I left all their English books in the car when I took them home to mark and their work from almost the whole year just vanished in the heat of the sun shining on the car. All that was left were blank pages with green comments on!

Doesn't the Papermate erasable pen use different technology. Been around for years, I remember them in the 80s. They say the ink becomes permanent after 24 hours.

Although they maybe are not quite as erasable, if you rub out lots you can still see some of what is underneath, rather like if you had pressed very hard in pencil. For this reason these pens could be a half way step re. weaning off erasables.

I also used to dampen an eraser slightly in years gone past to erase biro and I used to scratch out print with a scalpel but that would not work in school for obvious reasons!

I have been photocopying frixion pen for years and never had any problems, it is heat, not light that removes the ink.

Do schools discourage their use in exams too, for the same reason?

I should imagine that schools discourage them for the same reason that they discourage tippex. Making corrections like this wastes valuable exam time - it's much quicker, and also less distracting to thought-processes, to just strike through.

Just put a line through the stuff you want to erase. Markers will just skip over it. A. Long as they can read your script, they don't care about how neat it looks.

But ds uses them mostly to correct instantly-noticed spelling errors OR to correct (as he sees them) incorrectly-formed letters (such as a too-short tail on a 'y'). Both of these instances would take longer to cross through and rewrite (as opposed to just rubbing out the offending letter).

He really is that level of perfectionist.

(Just had some testing done and his writing ability is age 18+ and his pace age 8...!)

Lots to work on before we hit GCSEs!