Exam clash

[mrsrhodgilbert]

Dd has two afternoon exams which will clash in May. She will do one early, in the morning and be isolated, followed by the second in the afternoon. The exams are two hours and one 3/4 hours respectively, so reasonably long. She is to be given a 45 minute break, but effectively 1/2 hour when you factor in being in the second exam hall 15 minutes early. She will need to eat lunch, go to the toilet and get her head from one topic to another in this time. The first exam won't start until 10.30. Do you think a longer break in the middle would be fair and worth requesting?

Might be worth asking if the 10.30 am start could be amended to 9.30am. If you don't ask you won't get and genuinely it's a very reasonable request. 45 minutes is probably the minimum time which is acceptable. Any less would be cruel.

Thanks, I was thinking about an earlier start. I think the usual time is about 9.15, which would give her a decent break. I have asked, just suddenly worried that I was being pushy, needed a sanity check.

My DD had a clash at gcse and did one exam in the morning at 9am and then was in lockdown for the rest of the morning and lunch and did the other exam in the afternoon starting at 1.30pm.

I would personally push for the earlier start as it might be that the morning exam for your DD is a bit late starting and then that would make her break even shorter.

Good luck - hope you can get it sorted out.

Go ahead and ask, but children cope very well. With common entrance that children sit in Prep schools aged 13, we only get to give the kids a 15min gap between exams in the mornings - they cope just fine! They do all exams in the space of 4 days (well 2 full days, M and T, and 2 halves, W and Th). 4 distinct subjects a day on the full days and many are at a GCSE level!

Why's the first exam starting at 10:30am? Is it so she can be supervised for the least possible time?

It seems very weird to start an exam at 10.30am. The official start time is 9am +/- 30 minutes.

If there are other morning exams on, they will start in the official window, so surely your DD can be with this group.

Supervision isn't hard - it just means sitting in an SMT office or with a free teacher, and having lunch with a teacher.