Help from an exams officer/teacher please-urgently needed.

[KellySeveride]

DC3 has just received his English Language scripts back following a surprise grade 2 in his GCSE’s. He sat his exams on a laptop because he has incredibly poor handwriting. The teacher/adjudicator on the day of paper 2 has failed to attach his answers to the paper so he has received no marks for this paper.

What are our next steps, will the school have a copy of his answers (school provided the laptop used in the exam)? Will it be remarked?

This is a huge fuck up and is possibly changing his trajectory for next steps so I’m trying to understand what happens whilst I wait for the teachers at the school to reply.

Have you tried contacting the school? I’d leave a message on the answer phone and send emails with the title urgent.
Admin staff are often not term time only and some senior staff might be in.
School will have an Examinations officer with overall responsibility.
This all sounds so stressful. Hope you manage to contact someone soon.

Speak with your schools exams officer. School will have a copy and can provide it to the exam board. This can all be sorted.

Though if you already know that it was the school.that didn't submit the whole paper, you must have spoken to them already, so what did they say?

If you haven't spoken to school already, please don't automatically jump to the conclusion that it is the schools fault. It could just have easily been an admin error once the paper arrived at the exam board. They just haven't put both the written and typed parts of the paper together to form the overall mark. Or they have misplaced the typed parts of the paper.

It's not the teachers who can do anything - it'll have to be the exams officer. They will be able to contact the exam board who will tell them what the next steps are.

Please try not to panic.

Just a parent.
I would imagine this will be resolved by either

• they find the paper and get it marked

Or

• if paper can't be found then the exam board treats it as if he was ill and extrapolates a mark from his other paper.

Provided he 'passed' the other paper it should be ok i would think/hope.

Hope you get it resolved quickly.

Sorry I’m all in a tizzy about it. I have so far had an email from the exam officer at school with the scripts attached late last night. I have replied to ask where the answers for paper 2 are. As of yet I’ve not had a reply but I have asked them to treat it with urgency. I am assuming it was a lack of attachment but @xyzandabcmakes a good point it could be an admin error at the exam board marking place.

What discussions have you already had, and what actions have already been taken?

You can email the school head + exams officer, as this is a serious school muck up, not just a standard query such as seeking a grade review.

If it's an admin error at the scanning end, then they can sort that.
If it's an admin error at school, there will be processes which exist to deal with it.
This won't be the first time this has happened, so whatever systems there are will start moving.

It might not be quick though.

No discussions as of yet @concertinacornflake just an email asking where his answers for paper 2 are. I’ve just looked at the grade boundaries and he got a 5 in paper 1! Which makes this feel somehow worse because it would be his best grade (he got 4’s in everything else) although now I’m wondering if we should be requesting all scripts just in case.

Now isn't the time to asking for all scripts. You need them to focus on the problem you know exists until you know what's happening.

Respectfully OP, did you child complete Paper 2? Having worked in schools during exam season it’s not uncommon for some to sometimes not write anything for assessment, even with prompting from us as invigilators. It could be an admin error (a script not printed or attached) but I have witnessed students produce nothing to submit…

Yes but it still gets submitted and marked.

At our school the SEN has a copy of all things done on a computer for this exact purpose. Did he write his candidate number/centre number on the typed script?
it’s possible the EA just forwarded you the papers without looking at the details. But could be a mess up at the exam level so please don’t blame the school just yet.

Yep, OP has written “The teacher/adjudicator on the day of paper 2 has failed to attach his answers to the paper so he has received no marks for this paper.” I’m asking whether there was anything to attach - if a child uses a laptop to type their answers these need to be printed. If a child produces no answer then there is nothing to print and the paper would
go in with just a name and candidate info written on the front.

It’s a fair question and the first thing I asked my child before emailing the school. There are his hand written annotations on the script where he was planning his answer-so yes I am confident he is not lying to me when he says he did answer the questions.

If the answers have gone completely missing, I presume they will do what they do when someone is ill for a paper, and award a grade based on the other paper(s). They'll presumably need confirmation from invigilators/exams officer that work was completed.

With regards to next steps, if he needs the grade for whatever course he is doing next, contact that course provider and explain; hopefully they will accept him on the assumption that a higher grade will be forthcoming. It's a little complicated because if they students got at least a 4, they have to continue with maths & English. Some sixth forms do not offer a resit class, and so simply do not take anyone who hasn't got the 4s. However any regrade through should be through fairly soon, so hopefully they might take him on that assumption, with a proviso that he might have to transfer elsewhere if it turns out he hasn't.

Yes - and then the paper, which would be blank, but have marks on it, would be available under access to scripts.

So they've submitted the paper but the typed part is missing somewhere.

I was about to ask the same thing. Yes not completely unusual for a pupil to write their name and go to sleep. So no typing to submit! But hopefully the annotations are a good sign. What was the actual mark on the paper?

Ah, in that case then I really
hope school can recover their typed answers. Some schools I’ve invigilated in do, and others don’t. One school handled all the admin of printing the paper and attaching it together just us in the exams office, while another the students had to stay for the printing of their paper and sign each page after it had been printed and attached to the paper. This way the students knew their work had been submitted and the school covered their backs.

Fingers crossed for you and your child OP!

The marking scheme we’ve been sent for paper 2 specifically says “did not attempt” on it. His Paper 1 attachments have his name and candidate number on them. There is no such attachment with the returned script for paper 2.

Which means that every space where an answer was expected (and that includes if typed scripts have been scanned) was completely blank apart from his notes.

So the examiner hadn't missed it. It wasn't there at all.

I've been an invigilator for many years. The school I work at always keeps a paper copy, and I assume there would also be a computer file stored too. Good luck!

Is the exams officer getting back to you? Ours is back on holidays now and won’t be in til September, so I’d be copying slt and head of English into your correspondence if you’re not already.

I've had this happen before, student's usb stick was sent but exam board didn't mark the work on it. Our amazing exam officer just sent a copy of the work electronically and it was marked and grade adjusted within days. Was a great relief as her UCAS offer depended upon it. The error was with the exam board but this was not acknowledged by them and no apology for her place to study midwifery being offered to another student which was maddening. Her offer was reinstated though and that was the biggest hurdle.

Do you know the software used? I know the one my DD's school uses does save a copy. If your DS knows the name this might help.

I think there are a few points the school needs to confirm.
Firstly, as it's fairly unusual for a student to write nothing, and invigilators are supposed to circulate during the exam, they would have noticed a student doing nothing.Has the invigilator been asked?
Secondly,who is actually responsible for printing, checking and sending off?
Was there any sort of checking procedure in place?
If the school can provide evidence that something was written and the work was printed and sent off, you will have a better case for the problem being with the exam board.
As a previous poster said, the best procedure is where the student waits after the exam, signs each printed sheet and actually sees the whole script being attached together.