too many people having extra time

[IrmaFayLear]

I didn't quite know where to post this, so I've tried here...

Dd came home in some distress as it turns out that 15 out of 20 people in one of her A Level classes are having extra time for exams.

Dd is upset that it now seems that rather than levelling the playing field for people who genuinely need assistance, a minority are being penalised. Furthermore some of these extra-time people are in "competition" with dd in that they are highly ambitious A* people.

Dd said that one girl told her that "slow processing" is the new watchword and they paid for a private assessment. Dd said that this girl has no processing problems when it comes to quick-fire banter on social media and it's never been mentioned before.

If the exams are deemed too short, then surely give everyone 25% extra time? As it is with this particular subject, it's a case of some people being given 25% less time.

I had a quick google and a)there are masses of sites telling you how to get extra time and how to "fail" the tests and b) Ofqual has said that it is getting out of hand.

How are rhe students in competition with your daughter? Results aren't scored on a bell curve? She should only be in competition with herself. Only her marks matter no one else's.

DS is a similar age. He gets extra time and is allowed to use a laptop for exams rather than writing because his presentation and handwriting is so poor.

He's the exception though rather than the rule. When he sat his Nat 5 English last May (we;re in Scotland) there were around 200 candidates in the school. Around 10 had special arrangements, whether that was like him just typing on the laptop with no other support, a scribe, or someone to read the paper to them. That's more like 5%.

75% seems hugely excessive.

otra
That sounds like some of our students. We put the arrangements in from further down the school too so they've got time to get used to word processing.
It always surprised me how students who've grown up with technology are often slow at word processing in general so using it further down when we first find an issue makes things so much better for them

Certainly where my children did sixth form, they were encouraged to perform badly on dyslexia assessments to enable applications for additional time.
Definitely the largest exam boards see greater numbers from independent schools applying for extra time or other adjustments.

It seems unfair.

This makes me so sad as the comprehensive school I used to work in, which was 'outstanding' and great in many ways, was really poor at supporting students with special educational needs. Even for kids with really severe needs (in my view as an English teacher) we struggled to get our under resourced SEN department to get them an assessment. The community my school served was quite deprived, and very few parents would have had the language, resources, or familiarity with the education system to push for this themselves.

I'm not surprised to hear of the abuse of the extra time for spurious reasons, but I didn't realise it was so rife!

Are these exams designed to be time pressured or is the idea to get the most out of every student? If the latter, then it makes sense what a PP said that the exam time should be longer for everyone, so each student can do their best. If they don't need all the time, they can just finish earlier.

I don't think they're deliberately designed to be time pressured but the increased expectations following the syllabus reform has made them so. I teach A-level Economics and the students have to read, digest and respond to quite a large amount of unseen information in each paper. I am a fast reader and writer and I find it hard myself to do the essay questions in the time! My SEN students generally do well and I do think the extra reading time helps them.

Briefly, I think the papers should be longer, yes, but that would put even more pressure on exam centres. Last year we had a 3 hour paper that took 6 hours due to a candidate's special needs!

Results ARE scored on a bell curve so they are all in competition. Unfortunately there are some people who will gain any advantage and it does affect other people. No clue what can be done about it.

I just happen to have reservations about high fliers through school, zero concerns, claiming that despite 11 years of schooling suddenly they don't get the questions, that age 15 the words suddenly start to move, they need to be in a room on their own because they find the hall scary, and so on

Lola I think I can throw some light in this given my own DDs experience & several others that we know

I can actually understand why that might look suspect, but it very likely isn't. "High flyers" as you call them are possibly even more at risk too given the nature of certain medical conditions.

Some medical problems don't become obvious or can get much worse until puberty hormones kick in, my DD has 3 conditions in this category & I'm pretty sure some of her old primary school mates parents who saw her fly through primary, G&T across the board etc etc would be equally suspect of why she now needs help to get through exams. Hers is slightly more understandable given that she did end up in a wheelchair for a few years until we finally got to the bottom of & treat a 3rd condition that had helped put her there. Without the wheelchair years I'm sure she'd be judged as playing it too, I'm sure she still is at times, but it's ignorance, not her playing the system as she absolutely needs that help & medication to get her through exams.

There are many conditions that are affected by hormones, & some are bloody hard to get a diagnosis for, some of those conditions such as EDS also have a higher instance of giftedness, or ASD, or both. The negative symptoms of that may well not start to kick in until the hormones crank up, nicely in time for their exams. DD didn't have any help for SATs & ended up rushed to A&E at the end of the last exam & spent 3 weeks in hospital, she refused even the HT telling her to go sooner, but was so physically ill from the exaggerated stress that she felt, as a direct result of her medical problems, much of which wasn't diagnosed then.

HF Girls are also notoriously missed with ASD diagnosis too as they mask it so well, but that is absolutely exhausting for them & hormones kicking in will exasperate that too

Well DS is partially deaf. He is being predicted Ds at A-level because in all his mocks he left half the papers uncompleted and ran out of time.

He has also been given zero understanding by his maths tutor for not being 'fast' enough working out answers in class, not responding quickly enough. And told last parents evening by Chemistry teacher that he isn't demonstrating understand in class to direct questions in time.

I had to get his audiologist to write to the council to write to their hearing support service to write to write to the school to say that actually, he is using more energy trying to understand and process things in class than a child with normal hearing.

I had explained this already. Fuck all understanding. Previous school understood which was why he got good GCSE's which allowed him entry to take Maths sciences A levels.

He needs extra time now (which he never strictly needed before) because of this non support. Please try to understand that some children getting a bit of extra help means they can reach the potential they already have. It won't give them an extra edge, or make someone capable of getting a B with effort get an A

It is like there are 2 threads here:

1. all you need is a few forms signed by the SEN department
2. the significant hoops you have to pass through to get any accomodation: std score of less than 85 (my DC is 60 on some sub-categories), finding someone who is suitably qualified to test etc.

Is this a difference between England/Scotland/Wales/NI or has the assessment bar been raised across the board? (my experience is recent..)

However, I do not understand those who say it is easy to game the system. In my experience multiple expert reports were needed at several stages of DS's education.
Exactly this.

But yet teachers on this thread like @me1986 and @lolaSmiles claim it's as easy as getting the GP or SENCO department to certify. This doesn't resonate with me at all).

For the record, I doubt my DC will need extra time as processing speed is fine but may need a laptop with a word processor. More important to me is the "in class" support - handouts, sitting in the front row etc., laptop for homework etc.

Obviously there are worthy individual cases. In fact ds got extra time because he had broken his wrist and was clonking a plaster across the paper. In fact they gave him his own room due to the noise!

I am simply questioning the very large number in dd's class, and the pupil I mentioned has raised an eyebrow with dd as she has known her since Year R and there was never any question of any problem until now. And she has told dd that they were advised to go for slow processing.

What seems very wrong is that there are some people struggling for proper assessment, yet others can hop off to a private place and pay for a useful diagnosis. If you think this is baloney just google and you'll see a plethora of people asking how to get extra time and plenty of people willing to "help" them (for a fat fee).

What seems very wrong is that there are some people struggling for proper assessment, yet others can hop off to a private place and pay for a useful diagnosis. If you think this is baloney just google and you'll see a plethora of people asking how to get extra time and plenty of people willing to "help" them (for a fat fee).

Well I have to say if I knew a parent was just trying to game the system I'd be fucking livid.

Irma,

And she has told dd that they were advised to go for slow processing.

We were advised this by DDs maths teacher who had correctly picked up that she could swing from brilliant, to mediocre, even within the same topic, it doesn't need to be sinister

Unless you are Ireland, possibly Scotland or somewhere else with a different system, then I'm really not understanding this...

yet others can hop off to a private place and pay for a useful diagnosis. If you think this is baloney just google and you'll see a plethora of people asking how to get extra time and plenty of people willing to "help" them (for a fat fee).

This wouldn't make a jot of difference to the EP who will be doing the assessment.

Do you perhaps mean they paid to see a private doctor for an actual medical diagnosis, that they could then use to push for an assessment? Because, yes this does happen & you're right it isn't fair, but it won't make any difference to whether they get extra time or not unless they genuinely need it & might have been missed otherwise

@RockinHippy is right.

Many on this thread are accusing Ed Pyschs of being corrupt in pretending children have issues. If they have evidence they should be talking to the BPS, the profession body.

Sorry, it's the AEP for educational psychologists.

75% of kids in one class having extra time sounds odd, but it doesn’t automatically mean anything dodgy is going on. If 75% of kids in one school, that wasn’t special education in any way, were getting extra time, then that would be suspicious. Children with extra time will not necessarily be spread evenly throughout classes, so entirely through random processes you should expect clumps.

You might also expect more students with extra time in classes with lower entry requirements, and in essay subjects (as a maths teacher we are sometimes asked to produce evidence of need for extra time and are unable to because giving a kid more time to do maths they can’t do doesn’t help, or because it’s extended writing that’s the issue).

Getting extra time isn’t just getting class teachers to fill in a form. JCQ expect more than that - we have to provide exam papers where it’s obvious the candidate ran out of time, or where they improved their mark by being given extra time.

You don't get extra time through paying for an assessment- it has to be an in school assessment.
Extra time doesn't benefit those who don't need it. But does help those who struggle to comprehend the question or struggle to put their thoughts into words.
At Oxford they extended the time given for Maths exams to see if this would help underperforming groups - it made no difference.
For my Masters I had : open book papers, take away 24 hr exams etc. That didn't make the exams trivial, and you couldn't have passed without knowing your stuff.

Thinking that the only way to test students or "intelligence " with Time Pressured exams shows a lack of understanding.

Extra time isn't an especially good adjustment for many people - it's a lazy solution, and that worries me. But I agree with others on this thread pointing out you can be bright and still struggle. You say furthermore some of these extra-time people are in "competition" with dd in that they are highly ambitious A people.* Ok, so what?

I did fine through secondary school and I remember other students being chippy about me getting extra time, because I was an A* student so obviously didn't need or deserve it. Cos, you know, why shouldn't I have struggled a bit more and got As/Bs instead?

I'm an academic now and I needed those grades to get to where I am. And I'm good at what I do. But, despite having looked as if I wasn't struggling at school, I am pretty dyslexic - more severely dyslexic than most people who make it to HE and certainly more dyslexic than most people who make it through postgraduate degrees. And I can see so clearly how the smaller struggles I had during A Levels became magnified as I went on to higher levels of study. Someone who knew me during A Levels might think 'oh, but she does just fine, she isn't struggling and doesn't need support,' but I did, and now I can see how much it was taking out of me at that time.

Are people who are "slow processors", and need "extra time", allowed to drive when they are older?

@Torridon19, yes, I can drive, though it took me much longer to learn than most people. I have (touch wood) never had an accident more serious than backing into something in nearly 20 years of driving. My response time seems to be just fine. The kind of slow processing I have meant it took a long time to learn how to co-ordinate doing the gears and the steering and so on, but once I learned it and it was part of my long-term memory, it was done. I don't need to 'process' that bit any more.

I seem to be fine checking for hazards, too - but that's quite different from processing (say) dense written language. I don't do well with map reading or quickly reading a lot of information (eg., if there are five place names on a sign, I might not take them all in). But I learned to deal with that safely and am quite happy accepting I might make some wrong turns and need to correct my route, but so long as I do it safely, it doesn't matter.

Logic says that if more than 50% of students have an adjusted timescale, the longer timescale is the norm, not the reduced one.

Yes, but more than 50% of students don't have an adjusted timetable, do they?

The OP says 15 out of 20 students have an adjusted time - that's more than 50% of them.

Yes, but as @noblegiraffe points out upthread, this sample isn't statistically meaningful. It doesn't tell us anything about how many students in total have extra time, and it's a tiny, tiny proportion of all the students sitting the exam across the country. There could be perfectly innocent reasons why 15 of 20 students in this one class have extra time.