Testing Times, (or how Invigilators get it wrong sometimes)

My daughter has been sitting her GCSE exams this last few weeks, she doesn't seem to be particularly bothered about them..."How was the exam today, Meg?" stock reply has been "Pretty easy!".....so it'll be interesting to see what grades she attains.

Anyway, she sat her English Language one the other day, when she got home I asked the question, and for the first time she said it was pretty hard. She went on to tell me about the exam. When she arrived, there were too many people for the hall they were using, so Megan and two others had to sit in a different hall, with some other students. The invigilator handed out the papers, and Megan pointed out that he had given her the Foundation paper, when she was in fact supposed to be sitting the higher level, so he rang for the correct papers, and they were sent down.

Now, at this point, Mr Invigilator spotted that these papers were different to the higher level ones he'd already handed out to the other students, so he rang through to the office again, explained exactly which papers he was short of, and back they came....wonderful....commence exam!

So, early evening I get a phone call from the deputy head. He explained that there had been "a dreadful mix-up" and that the invigilator had made a mistake with the higher level papers he'd requested, and that Megan and her two friends had actually sat the English Level higher paper, but for "A" level, not GCSE. So that explains why Meg had found it "rather hard", because she had never seen the pre-release material for that particular exam nor had she done the required studying or revision for it.

Huge apologies, assurances that he'd spoken to the exam board, and they would look at the paper "in a sympathetic way, and make dispensation for the error" and assured me that "If Megan wanted to resit the exam next year, then the school will meet all the costs".

Now although I'm quite pleased that the school dealt with it very quickly, and contacted me to tell me what had happened, I'm not at all sure about the claim that the exam board will look at the paper and make dispensations for the error, this sort of thing has happened before, and the same claims have been made, and students have failed to achieve the predicted pass level that they expected.

We can only sit and wait for the results to come out now....and wonder why they don't write the students name on the paper they should be sitting, God only knows they have enough admin staff in the education system to manage it.