submitting digital papers

[MacarenaFerreiro]

DS is doing National 5s this year and has just sat his prelims. He is doing his exams electronically because of his appalling handwriting. This was agreed with school's learning support department way back in about September.

Most of the prelims went fine. Apart from one. DS was told after every exam to save his work onto the memory stick school provided and to hand it to the invigilator (who wasn't usually a teacher). Anyway, long story short, this memory stick has gone missing, cannot be found. DS has been given an estimated grade.

Have written a strong (but not cross and arsey) email to school asking what procedures they have in place to ensure this cannot happen again in May.

How do schools usually handle this?

We usually instruct pupils to save to the laptop's hard drive (we have files installed for AAA purposes- its phenomenally complex due spellchecker enabled/disabled etc) and the memory stick is a back up.

If a paper was lost,which happens in prelims, usually not AAA though the pupil would be given the chance to sit it again. Compromised of course but then no appeals so if questionable worth.

But there's no single policy that you can refer to as some schools don't have them at all and they are movable feasts.

To reassure re actual exams it will be printed immediately by a professional invigilator and bagged up with the rest for submission to SQA.

I kept the van waiting one year when I was transcribing and correcting a particularly eh hieroglyphical paper and the invigilator breathing down my neck waiting to print it did most for my words per minute

what do you mean AAA purposes?

DS doesn't have a scribe - he just does the same paper as everyone else but types his answers rather than handwriting.

I am really hoping school has a handle on the process - i'm sure it does. But nobody seems very worried that a paper has gone missing. Including DS, who is so laid back he's practically horizontal.

Alternative Assessment Arrangements doesn't mean he gets any support just is an umbrella term that which encompasses everything from separate accommodation , use of ICT to reader, scribe and additional time. It's not "loaded" and I realise it's probably jargon (sorry) .

Thanks for the explanation! It's all very confusing and DS is rubbish at asking what's going on. it's a large school and for most subjects there were at least a handful of them in a separate room doing the papers digitally. I'd hope they have the procedure down to a fine art.

Our Exams Officer has a portable printer that he takes to the exam room and prints the papers while students wait. The student cannot leave the room until the printed paper is in his hands, and the student has confirmed that all the paper has been printed and received.

Be highly vigilant, DS1 had a similar mishap in his actual National 5 Biology exam, half his paper went astray and he ended up with a mark based on his prelim, which he got 49% for ( he'd done a lot of work to improve on this and was on target for a B). It has had a major impact on his educational pathway. All because of a combination of a lack of attention from the invigilator and DS1 being impatient to get away, because he was worried about missing his bus, ( and also reluctant to question anything, it took ages to get to the bottom of what had actually happened).

Wiggly - this is my concern exactly. DS is away with the fairies most of the time and won't question what is going on. He'll be more focused on getting the exam done and getting home than questioning what is going on.

In most subjects he says there's at least two of them doing digital papers, in compulsory subjects like English or Maths, many more. In this particular subject it's just him. So there's no more switched-on student to query what the invigilator is up to. DS said that the invigilator wasn't a teacher in the school but you'd hope that the invigilators know the processes inside out and back to front.

If it DOES all go wrong. there is nothing to fall back on as the prelim is now all estimates too. This isn't a subject he is planning on taking at Higher, so it's essential that it all goes well in May.

I haven't had a reply from school, but to be fair it was quite late on Friday afternoon when I emailed. It's parents' evening this week too so I'll raise it in person then.

I'll tell you exactly what happened with DS1 as a cautionary tale ( which we eventually worked out), it would have been easy to avoid if he had been more persistent with the invigilator).
He couldn't find the multiple choice paper on the computer so filled in the paper copy instead, he claims to have told the invigilator this but from previous experience there were probably crossed wires. The system is not set up for " mixed" exam papers and as DS left before his paper was printed out when it was discovered that half his paper was missing it was assumed he'd run out of time and not finished ( who doesn't even attempt the easier paper?) By which time we assume the exam papers had been gathered up and disposed of.
All this was only discovered in August and took a while to get to the bottom of it, DS was awarded a D on appeal and we did not have to ask for the appeal so I suspect someone got into trouble but it was a very bad experience which really damaged DS1s limited trust in education.
Four years later he is going to have a shot at IGCSE Biology from home, I am stubborn!

OP with a name change.

I had a reply from school who do appear to be taking it seriously. They have said that going forward, each paper will be saved locally onto a hard drive on the computer under the pupil's name (password protected) before printing out. That's instead of saving it onto a USB stick which can go walkabout. So if a hard copy paper does go missing, they should be able to retrieve the saved copy.

I have also reiterated to DS that he needs to take a bit of responsibility. That it's his paper, nobody else's, and if he sees an invigilator doing something that he knows isn't right, that he's to challenge them. Politely, but firmly and assertively. It's too late once he's come home and mentioned it to me. (6 hours later when he's having his dinner and school is closed).

The teacher of the subject concerned was very nice when I saw her at parents' evening. She has no concerns about him getting a solid pass in May, as long as he keeps the effort up.