Extra support during exams

[elliejjtiny]

Ds2 is just about to start year 11. He is on the waiting list to be assessed for autism but no diagnosis yet. At the end of year 10 he and some other students were taken out of registration time and told together that the school wanted to apply for extra support in exams for them and gave them a form for their parents to fill in. We filled it in but haven't heard anything back. Meanwhile he struggled massively with his English oral exam a few weeks ago and we found out today he has failed his further maths GCSE that he took in the summer. Does anyone know when we find out if he qualifies for extra help?

Year 11s taking exams can have access arrangements if school can show it's needed and their normal way of working (e.g. typing, rest breaks, extra time to process, reader, enlarged papers).

What help does he require?

To be honest I'm not sure. He is desperate to appear "normal" so he masks until he really can't cope anymore. Then something small will set him off. Ideally he should be in a room on his own with a TA who could calm him down if he has a meltdown in the middle of an exam. However getting the evidence that he needs that is going to be difficult, if not impossible. Would it be possible for him to have an alternative to the English oral exam as he struggles with speaking (normally only says yes, no and fine, only very occasionally says other things. When he is with people he isn't close to he often doesn't say anything at all and my sister hasn't heard him speak since before his voice broke years ago)? Is there any other oral exam apart from English? He doesn't do French or Spanish thank goodness.

It's difficult because he might mask and do the exams without any support or he might not. It's impossible to tell. And he can't say what support would be helpful, either to me or a member of staff. When he gets upset about something we have to guess why and try to help him but sometimes we just don't know. Camhs gave up on him and so did the school counsellor because he couldn't talk to them.

DD had a letter from her therapist she saw for anxiety, panic attacks and self-harm, requesting a smaller room instead of the main hall but we paid privately for her sessions as her self-harm wasn't dangerous enough for Cahms.

In her case it worked wonders and definetely made a huge difference for the actual exams. We are currenlty awaiting ASD assessment results (again, paid privately).

Even a smaller room, if not on his own could help make the situation a bit less daunting. Perhaps ask if this is what the school had in mind for three pupils. If he sometimes needs to come out of a busy situation or assessment, this establishes his need.

The speaking assessment can be done with a small group or interviewed by the teacher, rather than presented to the whole class, if this helps.

I once invigilated for a lad who had adhd & special access arrangements - he had own room and rest breaks. I think proof is required but also it can be something like it's their normal way of working. DD was allowed to be in her own room due to anxiety (but in the end was in a small room with two or three others). That wasn't part of her dyslexia recommendation but school have evidence it was her normal way of working due to anxiety (which they had psychiatrist report to prove "diagnosis" for).

Some things have to be signed off as special arrangements such as extra time, reader or scribe.

Other things can be done by the school such as smaller room, or on their own. However schools will only want to do this where they believe it is necessary as it is more admin and they have to pay for extra invigilators.

There are also rest breaks and typing, I am not sure whether these have to be signed off or not.

Only orals for English Language and MFLs - assume he's not doing drama! As PP said, the Eng Lang can be done 1-1 with his teacher.

I guess you/he need to reflect on why he failed his FM. You can get the scripts back for free, so that might be worth doing.
You need to work out whether it was a revision issue (which access arrangements won't help with) or an 'exam panic' issue (where access arrangements might help) or something else (e.g. it was just too hard).
Does your DS work happily at home? I know some kids with ASD feel school is school and home is home which can cause revision issues.

You need to chase this with the SENCo ASAP. Small rooms are getting harder to get, and schools aren't keen to give them out because they are hard to find and staff.

Rest breaks are easy to get, and he doesn't have to use them, but would mean the clock could be stopped for a period of time if he was having a meltdown. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be allowed to talk to a TA he knows during an exam, and invigilators are limited in terms of what they can say to candidates, but at least it would give him a period of time where he could e.g. step outside the room or away from his desk, and they could say something to him.

I doubt he would get a single room with his TA. He might be in a smaller group, possibly with rest breaks and other adjustments depending on needs. Any access arrangements need to be evidenced and established as his normal mode of working. I didn't think the English oral counted anyway now. What went wrong in FM?

Why did he take FM GCSE at the end of Y10 (and before he took maths GCSE?). That failure might not be so much an SEN issue as a stupid decision by the school issue.

If he can't do the spoken language element, it's not the end of the world. It doesn't affect the overall grade.

Chase the Senco, in writing, email now. Ask for all the things you want.

Contact the SENCO and keep on contacting the SENCO. They have loads to do so you are going to need to advocate for your DS and make sure everything they need is in place.
My DS has just finished his GCSEs, he had extra time, a smaller room, rest breaks, a laptop and a prompter. But he needed to practice using these things. We needed to talk about how and when to use rest breaks, it turned out that the prompter made things worse! During one mock they put him in a room with a boy who had ADHD (his friend) but he kept rocking on his chair and tapping the table which distracted my son, so they had to be in separate rooms. There is a specific way of working if you use a laptop for exams which he needed to learn.
However, all this happened during the mocks which meant by the time he did his real exams we had sorted everything out. But it took a lot of communication with the school.

Thank you everyone. To be honest he would probably be better off in with all the others than in a smaller room with children who are likely to be disruptive or make noises, that would be ds's worst nightmare. No offence whatsoever to those children, I know they can't help it. My younger son is autistic and makes random screaming noises and that sets ds2 off. Ds2 ends up with his hands over his ears and rocking because he can't stand the noise.

I'm not sure what happened with further maths. He was part of a group of about 8 (I think) other students who took the exam and they have an extra maths lesson once a week after school. One other student got a 6, one other student failed, ds2 failed by 1 mark and I don't know what the others got. I don't know why they were out in for the exam in year 10. This is the first year anyone at this school has done further maths so the whole thing is a bit of an experiment I think.

@elliejjtiny - DD was in a smaller room with around 25 others, so kind of normal classroom size and the feeling of a normal test instead of 100 in the hall for a classical GCSE set-up. But all had similar issues, anxiety, panic, extra time for dyslexia but without reader/scripe. She had a really quite time, for her that was the trigger, too much noise.

The school had several rooms in place and did their best to sort the children according to their needs.

Her therapist offered also to apply for rest breaks but DD declined, for her a break in the work would have meant even more disruption instead of a chance to settle.

My DD got extra time in her GCSEs and used a laptop for writing exams (not maths). I think she was allowed rest breaks too, but didn't take them.

Despite the extra time she still didn't finish her English paper (barely wrote anything for the 40 mark question) and didnt have time for the 15 mark question at the end of maths paper. She does work slowly due to processing issues. Despite this she got 5s in Maths and English so did OK at the questions she did answer! It's very frustrating to know that if she could work quicker she would achieve so much more.

You'll want to chase asap when you get back as they have to show evidence/that it's their normal way of working in plenty of time.

Ds, when he got his ASD assessment, they mentioned they thought he might be better working with a laptop.
I reminded the SEN department about this about 2-3 months later, and they arranged for him to do a test. About 6 weeks later they told me that it was clearly going to be better for him to use a laptop - they actually said they'd never had such extreme results, so much so I asked ds if he'd tried to influence it, and he did say no. He scored in the bottom 25% for writing and top 99+% for typing.
It probably took 6 months to go from the suggestion to actually having one to work in the classroom, and that was with us buying one, as they didn't have any available at that point. And their school SEN department are reasonably good, if rather overwhelmed.

The advantage of using a laptop is also that he was then in a smaller room with just laptop workers, which helped him too.

Thank you. We've been told not to contact the school during the holidays but at 8:45 on the first day back I will be phoning and emailing to chase it up.

Just had an email from school after chasing it up and apparently ds2 doesn't qualify for any extra support during exams.

Have they tested him or just made that decision?

For ds he had to do a typing v writing test to see if he needed a laptop to work with and I know that those they're looking at speed of writing they tell to write in a different colour pen after a certain length of time to see how much difference it makes.

It's worth asking for details, as if he's close on the border then they may be happy to test again in a few months time. It's their results too!

Ask them which assessments they have done and what the results were.
For adjustments like a smaller room, rest breaks or a prompter a student doesn’t need to ‘qualify’ as such, so if you think that that is something he would benefit from you can push for that.

Thank you. I managed to have an actual conversation with him about it last night which is a miracle in itself. Anyway, he told me that a few weeks ago the school tested him and he said there were 3 tests, reading level, writing level and something to do with typing. The teacher told DS that he needs to score below a certain level in at least 2 of the tests to qualify for support during exams. They did the reading test and the writing test and he scored above average for his age in both. So the teacher said that there was no point in him doing the other test as he wouldn't be getting any support without scoring low in at least 2 of the tests. I feel that they didn't test him on the things he actually struggles with.

I think part of the problem is that I had undiagnosed dyslexia when I was at school and when I finally got a diagnosis at university I was entitled to help and I did so much better. For context I got 3 c's at gcse, 2 c's at a level and then I got a diagnosis and support and got a 2:1 in my degree. So I always make sure my dc get everything they should get and sometimes I try and get them stuff they probably don't need. The school are probably fed up with me asking them for extra help for my dc but I want them to have everything that's available.

It's hard because DS2 might be fine but he might go into shutdown mode in the middle of the exam. He does this thing where he puts his head down and his arms round his neck, over his ears, kind of like they tell you to do in the safety talk on an aeroplane. Then he starts rocking. There are a few things that would definitely set him off, like crowds of people all close together and loud noises which hopefully neither wouldn't happen in an exam setting. But there are other less predictable things that might set him off. If the invigilator went and stood right next to DS2, that would probably upset him but can I ask them not to do that (walking past him would be fine) or is that not allowed? Or if he put his hand up for more paper and wasn't responded to in what he thought was a timely manner then that would upset him too.

So those tests assess his eligibility for extra time. He can still have other allowances, such as a smaller room and rest breaks which are a support to coping with the exam itself, rather than an academic support.
I would email the school detailing what you have said above and ask for a meeting to discuss how your DS can be supported to achieve the best possible grades. Acknowledge that he is not eligible for extra time but state how the other arrangements would benefit him.