Number of exams in a day

[HowToDealWithItAll]

Is there no limit on the number of exams a teen should sit in one day? SEN DS had 4x Y11 mocks in one day and with extra time it was just too much.

Not for mock exams. It’s up to the school. There are rules for real exams and 4 would not happen.

Mocks are organised by the school. They're not the national exams.

4 exams in 1 day sound like very poor planning and too much for any child, let alone one with SEN.

During the actual GCSEs it's usually only 1 a day with the occasional 2 in a day.

A limit set by whom? Timetabling is hard and it won't always be ideal for everyone.

What have the school said about trying to rejig? Luckily it's the mocks and not the real exams where I'd be very surprised any combination of subjects lead to that many exams in a day

For real exams iirc the limit is 5hrs at gcse level. I may be wrong. Exams can be rolled over, or I think special consideration.

We have two a day, am and pm.

depends on how the timetabling falls but up to two for formal GCSEs

for longer exams like art they fall very early in the exam season to avoid clashes.

We definitely used to have up to 4 a day for Standard Grades (old GCSE equivalent in Scotland) but then they were all over in a couple of weeks. I was really shocked when I found out how long the GCSE exam period drags on for - must be hard to keep up motivation for so long.

I'm guessing four 'exams' is four separate sections still not totalling more than the school day.

For mocks, sometimes partial papers are completed as other areas haven't been taught, or have been assessed in class. A full suite of full exams would take away a lot of lesson time.

If it's e.g. a 50 min Shakespeare essay, (which is one part of one exam = 1/5) followed by a 45 min story writing task (one part of one exam =1/4), then later just 1 40 min science unit and a 30 min French listening test, it's fine. 4 real exams would take nearly 8 hours.

If GCSE scheduling leads to more than 5 1/2 hours of exams in one day, you have the option to move an exam to the following morning.
Or you get an allowance of a couple of % on the third paper.
I'm not sure if extra time is factored into the 5 1/2 hours.

DCs school scheduled 3 mocks a day. It was so they could get all the exams into a single week. There was only about 30 minute breaks between exams, so I have no idea how children with extra time coped. It was too much (IMO) even without that.

Mocks are organised and planned by each school, they all seem to do it differently. Saying that it doesn’t sound well planned for your dc at all.

Very occasionally depending on subject choices and exam boards used there can be clashes between GCSE papers.

@HowToDealWithItAll The timetables have been published on exam board websites for a while now so you can check how it will look for your ds and talk to school well in advance if there are any clashes.

Thanks @Muchtoomuchtodo , on the AQA website, where it says 9 and 16 for MFL speaking exams, does that mean 9 and 16 May?

And do you know how they decide who takes those on which of those two days? Is it just in order of alphabetical by surname?

Speaking exams are held between two dates - it will be 9 April and 16 May. The school will choose a date at its discretion - sonetimes multiple dates depending on size of cohort - and let the students know.

It's not the dates. The submission date for centre assessed units like speaking will be on the right, and the timetable notes 9 and 16 will apply.

Each child will get a personalised timetable from school, because they'll organise order the speaking exams themselves. It might be alphabetical, or by class. It might even depend when the HoD or teacher is free or can be covered .

It sounds annoying to have to wait to find out when it will be, but this is actually one of the ones where school can be more flexible and make it suit individual pupils and fit around what else they've got going on.

I don’t know sorry. Ours were all with WJEC.

Better ask your school specifically about that.

Actually it's between 1 April and 16 May for AQA MFL GCSE speaking element. I usually tried to do them earlier than May tbh.

@HowToDealWithItAll I meant to add (sorry for multiple posts) is that a PP is not quite right to say that two exams a day is only an occasional thing in the actual GCSEs. DS2 had one week with 10 exams so two each day. It's not unusual to have two a day and multiple in one week tho obvs it depends on subjects taken and also how many GCSEs are sat.

But if you have the timetable you can check it in full. Clashes at GCSE are pretty rare as everyone does such a lot of subjects; they are more common at A level tho IME.