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.

@DorotheaDiamond 's point about writing in the script "typed work" is an excellent one.

If there's anything written in the answer space, I always check to see what's in the whole paper - and I would then escalate if I felt something was off.

Can I ask what they said? I’ve worked in multiple schools and I can’t see how they would have a) failed to print or submit typed work and b) known they had failed to do that…. .?

ETA quoted wrong person sorry

Yes all the kids I have have to put page number/count, candidate number, centre number and exam code on every page… can take a while.

for info if you have a child who REALLY can’t write for whatever reason the invigilators are allowed to write these headers for them…just have to put a note in the paper saying that’s what they’ve done.

trying to get my school to spend money on typing software designed for exams that has auto save and automatic headers but they’d rather stick with wordpad (free)

oh and for languages esp a level get your kids to find out what the typing software they use for exams is and learn the shortcuts for the accent characters….i spent 30 mins after an exam this year watching a candidate hand write accents on their typed work (yes it’s allowed(

They might not know what happened so thought a general apology might work? Bearing in know the sheer number of papers that go
through a school in exam seasons things can happen. An English exam can have 240 entrants. And that’s not forgetting the Alevels on the same day. There is a lot of paper!
Our school has auto headers and now auto save exam software.

@DorotheaDiamond My DD was allowed to take in a crib card of the shortcut keys for accents when she typed her MFL CAs back in 2015.

well good news @KellySeveride tho what a mess up. Hope your DS is OK.

@TeenToTwenties for the MFL CA students were allowed to have a dictionary in the assessment with them so I am guessing a crib sheet of accents was fine as well. But tbh I would say yes, it should be allowed for the exams now. It's not as tho it is helping you know where the accents should be used.

Crib sheet of accents definitely allowed but it slows them down - better if they’ve learned them so they don’t have to keep interrupting their flow to look them up!

We had a full typed paper go missing last year eventually admitted to be exam board failing and we could provide another copy. she went from 2 to 5.

this year I told every kid who typed to write ‘typed’ under the question. I saw a lot more centres had done similar which is interesting

yes agree. It's easy on a Mac bien sûr but I am guessing schools don’t stretch to that

Oh I agree, but the crib sheet (about 2 inches x 1 inch, normally stuck to her laptop) gave her the extra security if she panicked on the day or had to use a less well remembered one. She had to know French & Spanish too.

It’s easy on a pc with word or google docs but most use wordpad or notepad which doesn’t offer the same functionality

Hope it gets sorted soon OP and that your son's trajectory stays the same - have you let his college know? It is clear from his written notes that he had strong ideas for his article (water AI, cheating etc) 🤞🏼Keeping fingers crossed for you.

Further Update:

Marking complete. Grade awarded! He’s gone from a 2 to a 5!

That’s great.
i woukd also ask that the school review his marks for each paper of every exam he took ( you get a breakdown of each paper) so they can check this didn’t happen on other exams

That's brilliant @KellySeveride well done to him. He must be delighted. I agree it might be worth a check on all scripts to make sure this was indeed a one-off.

ETA: Hope he is still Ok to follow his original chosen path post 16.

Hooray!!! I'm really pleased for him.

@clarythe school have sent me a breakdown of all of his marks. There was a crappy looking mark on a chemistry paper but his attachments were there, and he did come out of one of the chemistry papers saying it was really hard.

He is starting college on Tuesday doing the course he wants and is looking forward to going in and telling them he doesn’t need to resit English 🤣

To follow up, we went into college yesterday to make sure he could get on the correct level course (they were going to put him on the lower level one because of his English grade) and they moved him up a level. So they are aware that he’s likely not to need the English but they couldn’t un-enrol him off the course until they had proof. I had checked grade boundaries before we went in and had discovered he only needed something like 20 marks to get the 4, so we were pretty confident he’d get up to the recognised pass mark.

I'm so glad this all got sorted - he's done well to deal with all of this faff and a 5 is a really nice result.