School messed up badly - what happens

[prh47bridge]

I didn't expect to find myself asking for advice like this...

DS1 is currently sitting his GCSEs. Today at around 4pm his school phoned both my wife and myself to tell us he had missed an exam. We both said that he didn't have an exam today and suggested the school might be getting him mixed up with another pupil with the same surname. It turns out the exam board (AQA) issued a revised exam timetable for DS1 in February but the school failed to pass it on to him. It has sat in teacher's folder for the last 3 months. The timetable they did give him was missing three papers, one of which was today.

I rushed DS1 into school and he sat the paper but he was starting over 4.5 hours late on a 1 hour paper. I pointed out to the school that their failure has undermined his ability to prepare for this exam. They brushed this off saying he will have been revising in class. However, my son has pointed out to me that they have been revising for Module 2 of this exam and this was Module 1, which he is retaking because he failed it last year. He also now knows he has another exam on Thursday which he was not expecting and which is also a retake. He now has less than 2 days to revise the entire Module 1 syllabus for this subject.

The school is unclear whether my son will get any marks at all for this module. Even if he does, the maximum uplift under "special consideration" is 5%. My son feels this is grossly inadequate. There were two 4-mark questions on subjects that he knew he had to revise. He was unable to answer these questions at all. There was also a 6-mark question on a subject he intended to revise. He believes the lack of revision cost him at least 2 marks on this question. Overall he believes that this has cost him at least 15%-20% of the marks on this paper. If he is right, even if AQA accept his paper and give him 5% extra (which appears to be the best case scenario) he will end up being penalised for the school's failure, possibly being knocked down a grade or more from the grade he would have got if the school had got it right.

I will clearly be taking this up with the school once exams are over. However, I can't see anything in the regulations that covers this kind of situation. Does anyone have any experience? How will AQA handle this? Is there anything I should do?

However surely he knew he was resitting it so should've been revising at home

I agree. However, his revision plan is to revise the next week's worth of exams. So he is currently revising ICT (tomorrow), PE (Friday) and English Literature (Monday), to which he has now added Chemistry 1 (Thursday). He is ignoring everything after that for the moment. As he hasn't been studying the science Module 1 stuff for a year I think he should be doing a bit more on that but what do I know - I'm only his father!

The year 10s are sitting it, this is all very odd phr. Why aren't they doing new spec? 😳
Is the school generally quite disorganised?
It is very odd his teachers weren't reminding him to revise, even if he was the only one resitting. I have 2 y13s resitting an exam tomorrow for a course we don't even offer any more and i have been chatting with them about it.

The year 10s are sitting it, this is all very odd phr. Why aren't they doing new spec?

I am relying on my son for this information. He may not be correct. If he was the only person doing this exam I really do not understand why it took the school until 4pm to contact us.

if you can minimise the impact in front of him

I've already talked to him and told him to try and forget it and concentrate on the rest of the exams. He seems to have decided that he now wants to really nail the other two papers as a way of proving a point, even if he ends up with no marks for this paper.

However, do put everything in writing whilst you remember

Already been doing that. I am in possession of the exam timetable he was working to (dated 9th January). The correct timetable (dated 16th February) is on the noticeboard. I know exactly where he was throughout this afternoon and who he was with. So I think I've got everything we might need. The only thing I don't know is when he got the original timetable. He can't remember but, given the dates on the two timetables we've got, it must have been before Christmas.

prh ,
My son had something similar , not as bad I think , in that it was he was not given the revised timetable which said the exam was going to be in the afternoon rather than morning, and a teacher came and found him and his mate who were in the same boat. They were divested of everything and put into a "sealed" room under supervision ( during the exam time) so they took it in the afternoon instead. It was fine with the examiners.

It was a bit disconcerting for him, so I think at the moment the very very best thing you can do, which others have said and you are doing is , forget about that one , tell him concentrate on the others.

I do sort of get what people are saying about at 16 you should know but sometimes , in circumstances, DCs can just trust what they get in what looks like "the thing" . (in Ds's case - his friend had the same timetable - not sure if they had a date on the printout or not - so both having the same they thought it was ok ). I am not absolving him (DS) of responsibility - not one jot.

If it helps prh, DS's worked out fine , he got what he needed to to go on to 6th form and beyond.

Best wishes.

Ah twit , the exam was in the morning not the afternoon , doesn't make sense otherwise.

I thought his teachers were great in coming to find him ( he was at school) so really - the main thing was making sure it didn't knock him off his stride for other things IYSWIM

I didn't realise that science didn't work in a modular fashion anymore and he has to resit all three papers, which makes this whole situation worse. There is the provision for students who miss a paper for 'acceptable reasons' who have sat at least 40% of the exams to have their overall grade calculated ignoring the missed paper rather than giving 0 for the missed paper. Acceptable reasons would usually be illness with a doctor's note, but might be worth a shot if they don't accept his late paper and the school take full responsibility for not having followed procedure?

sitting their entire GCSE a year early and avoiding the new spec altogether?

tiggy I know this is entirely the wrong thread for this but I hope your DS's friends are also entered for the new spec Maths GCSE or their school is going to have a nasty shock when the league tables come out!

Is your son hoping to do science in 6th form?

Yes noble a few years back 3? a rule was brought in for all subjects whereby all exams were terminal and had to be taken at the same sitting, so retake one you retake all. I guess maths was unaffected by that so it passed you by.

My son sat GCSE Biology yesterday and people who took the test had posted stuff immediately afterwards about what had/had not been asked.

The exam board website listed the exam but I think it was the school rather than your son at fault here. I hope that it gets resolved in favour of your son.

The very least you deserve is absolute clarity - this morning, as early as possible, about what school is telling the exam board and what AQA will accept. However this came about, your son needs to know by 10am, whether there is any point in him sitting his chemistry paper tomorrow. School must acknowledge that this will have a knock-on effect on his other exams because they have disrupted his revision schedule and they need to offer explicit information about the rest of his science papers. And they need to do that with a sense of urgency.
For your son's' sake, I would lead with this point. You need a little co-operation from school first thing this morning so although you must be very cross, do try to stay calm until you have clarity for your son about his revision priorities for the next 24 hrs.
Good luck op.

I have no experience or knowledge, but I am so sorry this has happened.

As a mid-GCSE parent myself I am having heart palpitations on your behalf. Neither me nor DC would think or know we could cross check with the exam board timetable: we were given the timetable and trusted it!

Your poor lad. Is it a subject that will impact his A level choices? Does he want to stay at his current school for A level? If so I think I would be arguing that the school waive any sixth form entrance requirements that are affected by this.

I hope he can focus on all his other exams and show them what he can do.

I hope you get some helpful advice: I know you are a most generous and supportive poster to other parents on the education boards.

Is your son hoping to do science in 6th form?

Not at the moment. He wants to study performing arts at a local college. So it isn't the end of the world from that point of view. However, he really cares about this. He wasn't the only one in his year who got D or below in this last year but he is the only one who has chosen to resit. We had to pay the exam fee so that he could resit. I don't know if a further resit in January is possible if he doesn't get the grade he is expecting as a result of this. If it is and he decides to go for it I will be making some demands on the school. No exam fee for a start!

UPDATE

Had an email from the school last night saying they will put the best case they can to the exam board including all the points I have raised plus some more. They appear to be taking full responsibility for this mess. I'm not at all happy that this has happened but I can't fault the way they seem to be handling it so far. There has been no attempt to brush it under the carpet or blame my son. They say they will contact me today when they have the paperwork. They need to put together a case as to why they think the security of the exam was maintained and will clearly need information from me about my son's movements yesterday afternoon for that.

Good for your son for wanting to do the re-sit to get a better grade.

His attitude and grit should stand him in as good (and perhaps longer term) stead as a grade would.

Glad the school are taking responsibility.

I suspect the main reason security was maintained is that your DS had no idea he was meant to be doing the paper that day so wouldn't have been looking for anything on the internet about it!

(How he will improve the grade from last time if he hasn't been doing any work for it in the run up to the exam season is another matter.)

Good luck to your son.

Ds' school gave him an early and final timetable and sent me a copy of the final exam timetable. You might want to suggest that the school makes this their policy in future to avoid this situation happening. Our school handed out Study Leave timetables during the Form time that ds was doing his German speaking then were annoyed when he didn't turn up to sessions. I told them that they should have sent it to me via email or letter. How were we supposed to know?

How he will improve the grade from last time if he hasn't been doing any work for it in the run up to the exam season is another matter

That was my concern but his approach to revision seems to be to do the bulk of the work in the 7 days before the exam. He has been doing some revision beyond that but I think the science revision he has done has been aimed at the Module 2 stuff he studied this year.

He performed way below expectations last time. He thinks he managed between 29 and 38 marks out of 60 yesterday. I did a few past papers from Module 2 with him earlier this year when his confidence was low. He clearly knew more than he thought he did. Part of his problem seemed to be wanting to know things that are far more advanced than GCSE - why sub-atomic particles have particular masses, for example - and thinking that the fact he didn't know these things meant he didn't understand science. He was pretty good then at guessing how many he had scored before we went through his answers so I'm hoping that his estimate is about right. If his view as to the number of marks he dropped due to lack of preparation is right he would have scored 38 to 50. The school were predicting A or B.

Last year the whole of my DD's History class were told the modules in the wrong order. It was only at 11pm the night before that one of them realised they were revising the wrong subject and messaged everyone. I complained to the school who said we should've looked at the exam times and subjects on the exam board website. The school exam calendar simply stated History, not the exact module. They then produced a form which had been signed by the girls months before with the correct exam order on it and said because of this they were not liable. Even my comment that the WHOLE class thought it was a different subject didn't help. Sadly my DD lost her A grade over this because she was so stressed and tired from revising all night.

That's terrible FozzieMK.

Thankfully my son's school seem to be taking a different approach. I have spoken to the Exams Officer today and the school still seem to be taking full responsibility. I have now provided them with a statement outlining my son's movements yesterday.

I've looked at the timetable on AQA's website. I find it difficult to follow. I can find my son's exams because I know when they are. If I didn't I am not convinced I would be able to identify the correct papers. I would have thought in this day and age there would be somewhere my son could type in his candidate number and be shown his timetable. Mind you, as his school uses different exam boards for different subjects, he would need to do that on 5 separate websites to get his full timetable.

One of the teachers made a comment yesterday the significance of which I did not realise at the time. If I take what she said at face value, the reason the Science A papers did not appear on the timetable my son had was that the school had forgotten to enter him.