Exams Officers support April
See the infomation that is useful to help
Special Considerations
If a candidate has been disadvantaged during their exams, you may be able to apply for special consideration on Centre Services.
JCQ has thorough guidance which defines Special Consideration, its purpose and the scenarios in which it can be used - JCQ - A Guide to the Special Considerations Process. You can also see our Special consideration webpage for an overview of the process.
If you find that an application for special consideration may be suitable, please gather any appropriate evidence to support your case, and keep copies of this with a record of any applications you make. The school or college must support an application for special consideration.
You may find it useful to consider communicating closely with your safeguarding/pastoral teams to ensure you are aware of any students’ situations that might be eligible for special consideration.
Malpractice and Safeguarding
Once exams are underway, two key areas of focus are around malpractice and safeguarding within exams. Here we’ve set out some guidance to outline the key points in both scenarios.
Malpractice
Malpractice and maladministration are the terms used when the integrity of the exam is not upheld; the JCQ publishes a Suspected Malpractice: Policies and Procedures document annually to support centres, SLT and Exams Officers through these processes. Malpractice can refer to students or staff, whereas maladministration is centre level integrity. In all instances, the JCQ website has template forms to use if malpractice has been found or suspected. To support identifying malpractice, it’s useful to use an Exam-Room-Incident-Log as this can be used as evidence in any cases you encounter.
Malpractice and maladministration claims can be quite distressing for those involved, so it is important that invigilation staff and centre staff are alert and vigilant. It’s good practice to train invigilators to ‘suspect everyone’ so that they pay particular attention to prohibited items, suspicious behaviours and students trying to cause a distraction.
Safeguarding
AQA are involved in investigating any safeguarding concerns If a student’s paper is identified by the marker for a safeguarding concern. It is referred to the AQA safeguarding team who will triage the query and take the necessary steps to resolve it. In most cases, the safeguarding team at AQA will contact the Designated Safeguarding Lead for the centre directly, so it’s important all contact details are up to date and your emergency contacts are appropriate. Our safeguarding team can be contacted at safeguarding@aqa.org.uk.
Sending back papers, registers and labels
After exam sessions are complete and you have collected the scripts, the next step is to send them for marking.
Registers
You must always include a completed attendance register in your packages and include all exam material such as scripts, additional pages and word-processed materials. You do not need to return unused question papers to us.
Please make sure the register is marked as clearly as possible with a tick for present or absent, and ‘W’ for withdrawn or ‘T’ for a transferred candidate. This will allow for a smoother scanning process and timely marking. If you have any unused yellow exam labels, please log these on Centre Services so the team are not searching for missing scripts.
Sending scripts for marking
It’s important that you keep a record of all consignments that you send through the yellow label service. This is to make sure that you have the information available if you’re asked to provide it by us, or to track the package(s). A Parcelforce dispatch log is available for you to print and once the packs are collected, the driver will sign the log as confirmation of receipt. You should brief your reception team to ensure that you are contacted if a Parcelforce driver arrives to collect, so that scripts are sent on the day of the exam. If you’re unable to do this on the day, please make sure they are kept securely and arrange collection as soon as possible.
Visit our Send scripts for marking webpage to guide you through the process, where there is more information on processes and expectations both before and after the exams.
To help you prepare for the upcoming exam series, we have a ‘Test label’ feature on Centre Services.
This is to help you check that your printer settings are correct, and which side up to place your label sheets, so you can do this before the pressure of exam day.
To try out the test label:
- log into Centre Services
- go to the Resources tab
- click Administration
- in the Search box, type ‘labels’
- the Test Label will appear as a PDF document for you to print
Results are next, so congratulations on completing the huge task of conducting your exams, we hope this information was useful.