Would be interesting to know ratio of kids with extra time in private schools

[namechangetoinvestigate]

Has this ever been discussed? I know a boy at a top private school in Edinburgh who currently has 25% extra time in written exams for slow hand writing. He's a normal academic achieving boy no learning difficulties. The school has advised the parents that they are going to apply for extra time next year for all his exams not just written exams.

It made me wonder, are one of the reasons private schools getting good results because normal academic achieving kids are getting awarded 25% extra time? That's a lot of extra time and a huge advantage.

I know there's a lot of pressure for private schools to get the grades and wondering if this might be a loop hole they take advantage of, are private schools given privilege when applying for extra time? It would be interesting if schools published what percentage of their pupils got extra time in exams.

Worth a discussion.

I would say that 80% of students in my independent school has access arrangements
Unless it's a specialised independent school for dyslexia or children with SEN, that is hard to justify and speaks of a school or parents with very sharp elbows.

Exam rules are set by exam boards not schools

Yes, I do think this is an issue. Any educational assessment system where the stakes are high for both staff and pupils leads to schools working right up to the very edge of every letter of the guidelines. It doesn’t mean that extra time is wrong for those individuals, but when it is carried out on a mass scale it begins to distort the overall picture.

When I was teaching there was a local school that got great KS2 SATs despite very high levels of EAL. It turned out that they had arranged a reader for every single pupil. I won’t even describe the hair-curling tactics that our ambitious deputy head used to ‘turn around’ the results in our own school. But she got huge kudos from the results and the school featured in a ‘most improved’ list, so it all worked out well.

Dd got extra time for dyslexia and slow processing, she didn't get it at state school despite a diagnosis (at6) because they couldn't be bothered to fill in the paperwork!

DS already qualifies for extra time in exams. He is yr9 and in private school. He has not found it necessary so far but it will be a discussion we will be having with school over the next 2yrs as GCSEs loom.
He was diagnosed with a childhood form of epilepsy which he has grown out of, and no longer suffers seizures but stress and lack of sleep may increase abnormal electric activity in his brain. He only suffered night time seizures so no one would be aware of his condition unless they knew him at the time he was diagnosed. The abnormal activity causes memory and processing problems so he sometimes needs a little more time to access his memory.
Perhaps the boy the op refers to has a similar problem but to avoid having to disclose his medical condition it is easier to refer to it as slow writer.

There's a well known private dyslexia assessor with links to our local private school. He diagnoses everyone he sees with dyslexia. This leads to extra time in exams. It's bizarre and worrying.

Seems strange how all the private kids managed to beat all the other kids at the entrance exam then all of a sudden approaching GCSE seemed to not be able to write fast ???

Ds got extra time half way through gcses , then the week before his alevels they changed criteria he lost it.Not very fare really.
He is dyslexic , but cats etc but his lowest scores are average, so weren't low enough after criteria change.
He needed extra checking time, he has short term memory problems and cant really remember the number he was bringing forward from previous page etc.

@maddy68 - just so

I find this thread a bit sad in some ways

My DS is dyslexic . Yes I utterly accept that being able to pay for a private diagnosis is a thing. But he is. Diagnosed at 10 & various diagnoses having to be done until he was 18 ( i.e. just going to university - this one we could claim back as done by one of a number of assessors who were recognised by them & he ( assessor ) said - Yep - definitely dyslexic - I obviously paraphrase wildly there )

I think that people who are qualified and trained to diagnose dyslexia are not in the business of writing out a form to suit some parents. It is a thing they are qualified in. & It has been getting stricter over time. My son , when he was 9 or 10 , one lovely teacher said - have you considered he may be dyslexic - at which point we went to a properly recognised and qualified assessor. The school did not pay for it. He was not paid for by the school. I am will to bet a pound to a basket of oranges he would not have made that assessment for the sake of it. He is a qualified professional person. DS subsequently been assessed by 2 others ( including one who was recommended by university he was going to attend ) - all the same assessment.

I do understand that these assessments do cost money - that I get. But the school does not pay for them - so a wider issue re recognising it , access, and affordability, than the school.

I would be amazed if any private schools are getting pupils dyslexia etc diagnoses to get them 25 % extra time through properly qualified consultants , where not properly applicable, and as above - the exam board will decide if it's a proper diagnosis - not the school.

The rules do change - Ds still qualifies & has had to have more than one test. But they do change and actually so do the children / young people. So I think it is appropriate they have to go through it more than once in 10 years and specifically before important exams. 1) in case they need it and 2) if they don't - the extra time / use of laptop etc is meant to level the playing field not to give an advantage

And breathe

We never had to pay, school did WRAST ? test when he had his gcses , however from primary they always had him on the SEN register, He was/is very intelligent ,high CAT scores , high SATs but a 2 level difference between comprehension and writing. But his writing still scraped a level 4. He always had extra help through primary. Paying out for a private assessment would have been a waste of money.
He hadnt changed but between gsce and a levels the criteria did change, so he lost his extra time.

It was WRAT test and I realised it was actually the week of his A2s they took away his extra time.

At the end of the day, we just have to accept that private school kids are very often advantaged in every way over state school kids.

Money and sharp elbows will usually win out over any notion of equality, let alone fairness.

We could change this but we keep either voting in, or not bothering to vote out governments who themselves favour the entrenchment of privilege.

My Ds is about to go into year 11at a state grammar and is being assessed for ASD. He has problems with fine motor skills and has lax finger joints. His handwriting is also poor. He has had an OT assessment this year. The OT has recommended laptop use for all written work in class and exams. Ds did do the DASH test but he scored on the 24th percentile. I think we were told to qualify for extra time he would need to be the 16th percentile or under. So Ds is not entitled.

A couple of facts to aid debate, I hope.

1. The criteria for access arrangements in exams is set by the boards in accordance with common rules laid down in the JCQ orange book.
2. Evidence provided solely by parents is not acceptable.
3. Some schools are better placed to provide support to children - unfair but not unreasonable given that's the job of schools and parents.
4. What evidence exists suggests that in most cases there is no or only a small correlation between additional time in exams and better outcomes - counterintuitive but true.

We may as well give almost no one or everyone extra time and save the money, angst and wasted time on social media chat groups.

My daughter went to three private schools and this wasn't a thing at all, the very very few kids who got extra time needed it

But - and I will leave it here - @Aussiejazz - whatever else the debate is - is not the extra time not meant to level the playing field - NOT to give an advantage. So if your point is that e.g. a dyslexic pupil will not get a better outcome from extra time - that is interesting. All I know is that ( roughly ) aged 10 - 11 - Ds's exam results took a dive. As it turned out he was not writing proper sentences as required because he could not - so did shorthand writing ( well not actually shorthand - that would be a decent skill ) but writing v short things because he knew he could not get everything down on paper in the time. An assessment and being able to use a laptop ( as a normal way of working ) did wonders for him. He can now write - handwritten - notes etc for his own use through 2ndary school and university , and now he is beyond that so many people use computers I don't think it actually matters that much - so all good. There are worse things than this I would want to have to deal with.

This thread is odd. OP muses whether private school pupils are more likely to be awarded extra time in exams.

This has lead to posters taking it as gospel that private school parents are cheating the system or citing anecdotal or unbelievable evidence (80%!), and ranting about privilege.

Is there actually any data available to suggest proportionately more private school pupils are awarded extra time? Any at all?

The sixth response to the OP has a useful link regarding 'evidence'.

HTH.

<a class="break-all" href="//[http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-38923034" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-38923034 here]

Hope this works as I can't preview on an iPad.

There are huge discrepancies in proportion of children from independent versus state applying and gaining special consideration in exams.
It’s not just additional time, it is other adaptations such as laptops and scribes.
The criteria are the same but invoked about seven times as frequently in independent schools.
Independent schools often encourage ‘special needs’ diagnosis through recommendations for educational psychologist testing done privately.
Yes there’s evidence held by exam boards but it can’t be claimed or acted upon as cheating because private school lobby is too powerful and exam boards can’t be seen to be discriminating against youngsters with ‘disabilities’.

Seems strange how all the private kids managed to beat all the other kids at the entrance exam then all of a sudden approaching GCSE seemed to not be able to write fast ???
Absolutely this. We can see that the system is being abused by some private schools.
I personally know one pupil who wrote deliberately slowly during his assessment to gain extra time,I don’t know how common that is.

Have you not thought that maybe some children are at independent schools because they are better suited to deal with their SEN? A good friend has 3 children and sends one of them to an independent school as he is dyslexic and the state school just couldn’t provide him the support he needed. He has come on massively since moving to the independent, with smaller classes and more individual attention

Typically 15% of children in state schools are identified as having additional needs that affect learning and child ability to prove their understanding.
I think roughly 25% in private.

Kids are still missed and struggle in both environments. The 10% difference I think is from a combination of parents who have the resources both financial and the agency to push for answers and schools having resources to do testing and then support the needs that are identified.

Extra time, laptop, scribe, reader, coloured paper, all can help bridge the gap of ability and additional difficulties.

Is it abused? Hard to say, exam boards vary and what they audit varies. Assessments vary. It’s not a level playing field though, but that’s not just about exams.

Post school it’ll all come out in the wash I suspect. I’d love to see some stats on the breakdown of students who crash out of uni, particularly for second year where the scaffolding of private school kids seems to come off.

If a child is finding the time given to do the exam is too constraining for them to give their best possible answer, there must be a reason for that, whether or not they have been diagnosed. So why not give all children extra time rather than just one in 5 of them? Time would not then be a limiting factor in the quality of any child's work in the exam. Instead the constraint could be on the length of answers given.