School told my 14yo to bring a typed cheat sheet into exam

[marmaladejam1]

I am surprised that my 14yo was told to type out a "cheat sheet" to take with him into to the exam. They could pick one topic only to have a cheat sheet. No idea how they checked! He is in a selective school.

I wonder if they wanted to see what they could do with the facts infront of them (so question answering technique) v revision?

Or too much to revise?

Seems strange though unless told which topic.

What Subject?

We did this a few times at secondary. We were allowed one index card of notes to take in with us.

Ok? Thats pretty common.

Some exams are closed book (ie you have to remember everything) and others are open book (ie you can take in resources - sometimes that’s a limited amount like one sheet, sometimes it’s the whole textbook).

Theyre not actually asking him to cheat just to bring in allowed resources.

This has happened at our school for some exams it is normal

What exam? If it’s an internal exam, set and run by the school for their own purposes, they can do what they like (though it won’t be giving the students a good idea of what a real, public exam is like unless this will be allowed for them too, which does sometimes happen).

If it’s an official public exam, leading to a qualification, and taking notes in is not allowed, this cheating is very serious and you should report it (governors, academy Trust / LA, Ofsted, possibly local paper).However, this scenario seems unlikely at 14.

history

Year 10 . Internal school test. Wish I was allowed to bring in notes when I was at school 😁!!!

It can actually work quite well because it encourages them to engage deeply in order to create the card (ignoring the possibility of ai). Summarising work and selecting key points is a really useful revision technique.

For an internal exam it's fine and yes as others say, can help them to work and use notes effectively. The school will be expecting a certain standard of exam work on that topic as they had notes, vs others which they had to remember.

It’s not a thing in public exams (eg GCSEs) – there are no open book exams any more AFAIK anyway. In speaking exams for MFL you have a short prep time and you are allowed to make notes then and take them in (for most boards) but nothing pre-prepared.

It’s an internal exam so they can make the rules. I wonder if they are going to see how different the pupils answers are for the questions that they have their cheat sheet for? Maybe a way of helping them to prepare the kids for future revision techniques?

It's a good revision technique, and helps them learn different ways of revising for GCSE's (obviously in gcses they won't have it, but it's a good starting point).

We were allowed 'cheat sheets' at uni for in person exams after the pandemic because none of us had sat proper exams for a while.

My 14 year old has to bring a cheat sheet to every maths end of term progress test. He rarely bothers, gets a detention for not doing the homework ( the cheat sheet ) and wonders why his marks are low!!

Learning to use allowed resources (open books etc) is an important skill. You still need to know the content to make use of the resources.

One professional exam we were allowed to bring every single textbook provided over the course. Sounds great but there wasn’t really time to check stuff anyway. You had to know it, or at most where to find it within a minute.