Exams (a disability success story) [wow]
I am fairly knackered as I have just had 15 hours of exams in four days. Luckily nothing went seriously wrong. In the past, computers have crashed, or not turned up, or overclocked, or something, but this year it went fairly smoothly.
Over the last year I have been trying to increase the amount of extra time I recieve in exams to 50% as the diagrams at AS level are much harder to describe than previously, and I must say dictating A level Further Maths is soo fustrating. Thankfully the exams boards came to their senses and awarded me the time. However they did not look kindly on me using an assistant in my Physics practicle so I am set to loose ten percent of those marks (Die EDEXEL DIE!!). The director of studies at school was told by Edexel to talk to JQA and told by JQA to talk Edexel. Edexel then suggested I studied Psychology instead of physics! Interestingly, JJ Thomson, who discovered the electron, never did any experiments himself because he was so clumsy.
The downside of having extra time is that I have stupidly long examms: 4 and a half hours for Physics Chemistry and history. However I only need half that amount of time for Physics for some reason! It also meant hardly anyone was around when I finished :(.
Unfortunately for me, the two longest and most difficult exams (Chemistry and History) were timetabled for the same day; that meant unless history could be retimetabled I would have NINE hours of exams in one day. Thankfully someobody else realised how stupid that would be, so I got me way and spent about 26 hours in isolation.
Overall, apart from all the exams being bunched up in one week, everything went well, as the school showed a surprising amount of flexibility.
Glad it's over! |-)zzZZ
Over the last year I have been trying to increase the amount of extra time I recieve in exams to 50% as the diagrams at AS level are much harder to describe than previously, and I must say dictating A level Further Maths is soo fustrating. Thankfully the exams boards came to their senses and awarded me the time. However they did not look kindly on me using an assistant in my Physics practicle so I am set to loose ten percent of those marks (Die EDEXEL DIE!!). The director of studies at school was told by Edexel to talk to JQA and told by JQA to talk Edexel. Edexel then suggested I studied Psychology instead of physics! Interestingly, JJ Thomson, who discovered the electron, never did any experiments himself because he was so clumsy.
The downside of having extra time is that I have stupidly long examms: 4 and a half hours for Physics Chemistry and history. However I only need half that amount of time for Physics for some reason! It also meant hardly anyone was around when I finished :(.
Unfortunately for me, the two longest and most difficult exams (Chemistry and History) were timetabled for the same day; that meant unless history could be retimetabled I would have NINE hours of exams in one day. Thankfully someobody else realised how stupid that would be, so I got me way and spent about 26 hours in isolation.
Overall, apart from all the exams being bunched up in one week, everything went well, as the school showed a surprising amount of flexibility.
Glad it's over! |-)zzZZ
posted by Luke at 6:40 pm
3 Comments:
Sorry about that rather garbled post. I really am tired and it was written at 9pm on saturday. And guess what, it was back to school again today with double physics, double maths. Life sucks.
I had similar problems with AQA over their chem open book paper diagrams (and Edexcel physics)...they both insisted that I could not have large print and tactile diagrams - the chem diagram was just a red yellow blur :( For the physics I ended up asking for braille papers, and just let my scribe read to me *shrug*
The exam boards'll have to sort themselves out soon - if you go to uni it should be easier to organise.
If you think the extra time makes for long exams at A-Level just wait until you go to University! My department is particularly keen on open paper, where you collect the questions, write up your answers in your room and then return them one, two or three days, or even a week later. That makes for some very interesting extra-time calculations, and the unfortunate results that whilst your peers are celebrating the end of exams you have still got twenty hours of hard slogging ahead of you. I have just attended my department's Graduands party - marking the conclusion of the final exam of our degrees - except that I haven't finished, and still have a night of writing ahead of me. Not that I'm complaining!
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