SPAG marks for GCSE

[OhCrumbsWhereNow]

Looking for some advice on how many marks are at stake here.

Y9 DD is clever but has pretty severe dyslexia and has hypermobile finger joints that makes writing by hand extremely slow and painful. Her major issues are working memory and spelling, her reading is okay but she wouldn't ever find it 'fun'. Her target grades for GCSE are 8/9 across the board.

She's used a laptop with editing software since Y6.

The SENCO has been in touch to check that DD wants a laptop for all exams, and has asked me if she wants spell check enabled or not - with the proviso that if it's enabled she can't get the SPAG marks. Unfortunately SENCO did not provide any info on what that means...

Without spell check I suspect the examiner would need to be something of a cryptanalyst as everything is written phonetically and the same word is often spelt four different ways in a single paragraph (no intervention has made the slightest difference to DD's spelling so we gave up and just let software solve the problem).

If we opt to keep the spell check enabled, would that rule out any chance of getting top grades? Are there SPAG marks in all subjects and do they carry the same weight?

Every assessment/end of topic test/exam, yes. From y7-13.

Not literally outside, no. In the learning support base or the library or a computer room, based on need.

At our school (exams officer here) we try to encourage the teachers to set in-class tests that fit within the lesson with extra time, so for us that’s 40 min standard, 50 min with 25% extra time. Extra timers start first and everyone finishes together. Access arrangements are in place for all tests as normal way of working. It’s not always easy - but we try our best!
PS great to see a SENCO checking in year 9, ours always leaves it so late!

I think the SENCO team is either new or has been newly revamped as we've suddenly had a lot more contact - Covid provision at school was great in terms of online streaming etc, but being a huge school and in London, Y7 was a nightmare in terms of endless isolations and lockdowns. So things that I'd have looked into sorting early on rather got overlooked as everything was a bit of a mess for everyone for those years - and I felt school had enough to deal with trying to sort the exam year groups and just educate everyone!

Y9 feels like a good time to get things in place though, especially now everything is back to normal, so it's really useful to know what other schools are doing and to try and make sure DD has a level playing field going forward.

We also allow any dispensations in class for all tests from y7 upwards. You have to otherwise it doesn’t count as normal way of working. Like another poster normal assessments are 40 mins, so the extra timers 10 mins still fits into a 50/55 min lesson.
as an aside OP I examine GCSE science and no need to worry about SPAG at all ( for my exam board anyway) in science other than a very very few words which must be spelt correctly eg mitosis/meiosis.

Is your DD getting any spelling help at school? There are programs that can be offered such as thatspellingthing.com. When my DS was in mainstream he also had a block (should really have been weekly but wasn’t) of 1-1 regular spelling sessions.