Three Alevels on the same day?

[Possiblynotever]

My DD just checked the timetable of her Alevel exams. On the 7th of June she will have three: Spanish, English and Math. I have contacted the school and they say that it is unfortunate but there is nothing they can do about it. Apparently there are " regulations" that deal with this and they will make sure she is aware of them.
I feel that three exams in the same day is truly a very stressful experience and I doubt she will be able to be on top of all the topics.
Is there something that can be done?

How long is each exam?

I’m from Spain and the university admission exams (equivalent of A-levels) there are taken across 3 days each year, in big lecture halls with hundreds of other students packed in. Not the most calming environment.

Everyone takes a minimum of 7-8 subjects, exams are 2h long each and you’ll very often have 4 of those 7 subjects on the first day.

This is how I took my exams and how everybody else has taken them for decades, and ever since I did. I have a sibling sitting them next summer, they already know on the Tuesday they’ll take Spanish, English, History and Music. Wednesday is Catalan, Biology and Philosophy and Thursday is Maths and Further Maths, taken together.

I’m sorry but they just have to deal with it. They’re prepared during the two years of sixth form on how to deal with multiple subjects across 2-3 days. These are kids who might go to university next year and it gets even tougher there. I was only in my second year when I had 2-3 papers due to the same week, plus a written exam and an hour-long practical assessment in my main discipline (performing arts). Final year is bonkers in some degrees.

Unless there are additional needs, you start getting organised now and you deal with it.

I feel that three exams in the same day is truly a very stressful experience and I doubt she will be able to be on top of all the topics.

To be honest, at A level, if she isn't across the topics well enough to deal with 3 exams on one day, it really isn't going to make much difference if she has 2 on one day and 1 the next.

I had a vague recollection of sitting 6 hours of exams in one day too, and have just checked (anyone as old as me will know that we used to be able to take exam papers away with us, and I have kept mine).

In 1979 I did General Studies A level. There were two 3 hour papers, both taken on the same day, so the timetabling of 6 hours was clearly deliberate rather than an unfortunate consequence of unusual subject combinations. General Studies was obviously only one subject, but it was extremely wide ranging - we had to answer questions on the arts, humanities, science and maths.

More recently my daughter had clashes both at GCSE and A level - made more complicated by the fact that she was entitled to 25% extra time because of her dyslexia.

It's a shame for the OP's daughter but I agree with others that it is not an organisational problem, but inevitable for some pupils.

Fifthtimelucky I thought my A levels were 3 hours long, but wasn't sure.

I had 2 exams a day for three consecutive days. So three days of six hours!

Still coped!

That's a fairly unusual combinations of A-levels. The timetable is set so as to minimise clashes and affect the least number of students. Unfortunately your dad was unlucky.

As others have said, if the papers total more than 6 hours, she should be given the option to defer one until the following morning. Unless of course she also has an exam then. You would have to sign something to say you will supervise her isolation overnight and ensure that she does not have access to the internet or other people. She could choose to do all 3 on the same day too if she'd prefer.

If it's less than 6 hours in total, she'll just have to get on with it.

If every exam had its own unique slot, the exam season would last forever! So some have to be doubled up, and they do look carefully to double up subjects that are not commonly taken together.

She's very unlucky but yes she'd have to suck it up.
Schools generally use more than one exam board so it really is bad luck rather than bad scheduling.
People discuss the exam questions in detail online and in real life straight after the exam so she'll have to go through the supervised breaks and power through

Love how people are just making up responses based on what they think will happen/what happened to them in the 80s

@Possiblynotever
Please speak to the school directly, one may be deferred to the next day

40 subjects, say two papers each, if no more than two subjects are timetabled each day, then that means eight weeks of exams. More if some subjects have three papers. You'd need to start the exam timetable pretty much straight after Easter.

They'll try and avoid clashes between more common combinations, so that the number of students affected is minimised. Someone mentioned some possible score adjustment - or it may be counted as "special circumstances" which can be borne in mind if the result is borderline.

My first and second year university exams were both four three-hour papers in two days - and that was deliberate!

Schools generally use more than one exam board so it really is bad luck rather than bad scheduling.

The exams are all scheduled at the same time tho, regardless of exam board. All the Eng lit exams, from al the boards that offer it, will be at the same time of the same day - otherwise there would be a lot more clashes.

But think about it OP - if there were no clashes at all, there could only be one subject examined each morning and each afternoon.

That week in June alone sees 32 A-level exam papers being sat, over five days. If they were spread out at two exams a day, to avoid clashes with Polish and politics, that week alone would have to last 16 days, or more than three weeks. I imagine the current timetable spans about six or seven weeks of exams; imagine if that were trebled to about 20 weeks - five months of exams? There would be uproar.

I should have said, 40 was a ballpark figure - between all the exam boards, there might be more than 50 subjects.

That sounds fucking horrendous.

Your kid will survive the very normal thing that most students taking A-Levels also go through. Alternatively, she can drop a subject and miss that exam if her mental health won't survive it.

@HelplesslyHoping

Fabulously helpful comment

Unfortunately it's just the way it is with exams.

I remember doing my A Level's and I had my history exam (In which I was the only student sitting the exam) and I had about an hour and a half break before my English Literature exam.
The examiner kindly interrupted me mid exam to explain that they didn't want to stay late so they had moved my English exam forward meaning I only had 45 minutes between the history exam finishing (2 hours in length) and the English exam starting (also another 2 hours)
I was fuming not only because I had no down time between the exams or the chance to go home and get something to eat but also because they had interrupted my concentration during my history exam and then rather than having 100% focus on the exam I was sitting my brain started worrying about the next exam. Pretty sure I would have got a higher grade had they not interrupted me mid exam.

@Motherhippo

Unfortunately it's just the way it is with exams.

I remember doing my A Level's and I had my history exam (In which I was the only student sitting the exam) and I had about an hour and a half break before my English Literature exam.
The examiner kindly interrupted me mid exam to explain that they didn't want to stay late so they had moved my English exam forward meaning I only had 45 minutes between the history exam finishing (2 hours in length) and the English exam starting (also another 2 hours)
I was fuming not only because I had no down time between the exams or the chance to go home and get something to eat but also because they had interrupted my concentration during my history exam and then rather than having 100% focus on the exam I was sitting my brain started worrying about the next exam. Pretty sure I would have got a higher grade had they not interrupted me mid exam.

Now that's just plain unreasonable. Interruptions to an exam should be logged, and nobody should be told (with effectively no notice) that their exam has been moved forward. You ought to have qualified for special consideration for both papers.

@ssash I hear what you are saying but frankly I do not think that the current youth deserves to be called " snowflakes"... I feel that they are generally very responsible, thorough, well meaning and healthy. They have to manage their lives much earlier than we ever had to in a totally uncompromising society with mean previous generations that got Uni fully paid for calling them " snowflakes" sitting on their defined benefits packages...

@EileenGC I know how the Spanish system works and it is better and easier. You have a set amount of days with examinations all at the same time. No boards. The papers are chosen by the Ministry of Education and released on the day to headmasters. All go at the same time.
In England you get several exams on the same subject, not one.

Frankly I would not see any problems with exams going from the end of April to the middle of July.
Her GCSEs started at the end of April and the last exam was at the very end of June ( she took four in year 10 and 2 in year 9). She had two exams in a day but not 3.

@OnceuponaRainbow18

Love how people are just making up responses based on what they think will happen/what happened to them in the 80s

@Possiblynotever
Please speak to the school directly, one may be deferred to the next day

My response was based on recent (pre Covid) experience as an invigilator. It's unfortunate but nothing to do with bad organisation and university will, no doubt, be harder.

[quote Possiblynotever]@EileenGC I know how the Spanish system works and it is better and easier. You have a set amount of days with examinations all at the same time. No boards. The papers are chosen by the Ministry of Education and released on the day to headmasters. All go at the same time.
In England you get several exams on the same subject, not one.

Frankly I would not see any problems with exams going from the end of April to the middle of July.
Her GCSEs started at the end of April and the last exam was at the very end of June ( she took four in year 10 and 2 in year 9). She had two exams in a day but not 3.[/quote]
Well to start with, excepting MFL speaking exams and practicals, the GCSE exam period runs from the start of May to the end of June. Not sure how your DD had exams over a longer period but maybe this was related to COVID?

I haven't counted up all the exam subjects and papers, but I don't reckon my 20-week guesstimate is miles out; if exams started after Easter, and didn't run over half term, and there was only one exam each morning or afternoon, I don't think you would be done till the end of August. You might be OK with that but I doubt if teachers, students, markers, exams officers, university admissions officers and everyone else involved would be.

What sashh says.

I had at least a couple of days where I had two 3 hour A level exams - one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

If you DD can't manage 3 shorter exams in the same day, she'll find she won't be very well equipped for the world of work either, where she'll have no mother to complain that she needs to do three separate presentations on different topics to different people, in different locations, all on the same day.

Hah! I have just counted and I make it about 90 A level exams so I have overestimated. I am not sure if AS should also be allowed for - but FS should...let's call it 9-10 weeks of exams. That would still take us right to the end of July which would be a massive headache for many of the people involved in admin of exams. The results don't come out in August because that's what they feel like - it's because that's when they can get the work done. So all dates would be pushed back a month-6 weeks and uni terms would have to start later...I don't tbh think it is worth it OP.

It's not an organisational issue and nothing to do with the pandemic, I did my A Levels twenty years ago and did two most days. Several of my classmates had clashes and had to be held in isolation to do the paper later in the evening.

Maybe it is particularly demanding on this cohort who did not sit formal gcse exams either.

@clary dd sat A levels in 2019, so newer spec I think.

@Possiblynotever you were complaining about the amount of exams happening on the same day, not how the UK chooses papers or organises its boards.

I was simply saying that many kids, around the world, deal with multiple exams on the same day, and that’s just the way it is. The UK education system isn’t perfect but doing 3 exams in one day (unless there’s simply no physical time for them all) is not unreasonable, and not the main problem in said system.

I’d also love to spread my most intense workload between April and July each year. The reality is, it doesn’t work like that in the real world. Sometimes I have back-to-back deadlines and projects all needing to be completed within a week and I don’t love it, but if I get organised in advance it’s doable.

If your daughter starts getting organised and planning now, there’s no reason why she can’t do well. If each subject has 4h+ papers and she’s expected to write continuously between 9am and 9pm then of course, that’s way too much.

And no, Spanish papers don’t get ‘released to the headmasters’. Because exams are taken in external centres, headmasters don’t even find out your grades until a few hours before you do.

It's always been this way. I did three. It's fine