Exam Regulations

Will I lose marks for messy handwriting in an exam?

Generally speaking, you won't lose marks in a exam for messy handwriting. It's mostly school teachers that mark the examination papers and they've spent years looking at your messy handwriting, so they're going to look at that in an examination. You won't lose marks. Obviously, if you don't communicate with the examiner, if the examiner can't read your handwriting, then there is a difficult there. They can't mark work that they can't make a judgement on. If your handwriting is neat then that's helpful, but certainly you won't lose any marks because you're not very good and handwriting. That's in general terms. Of course, if they were measuring handwriting then there would be marks lost for that, but generally speaking handwriting is not measured in exams.

Will I lose marks for spelling words wrong?

You certainly will lose marks for spelling words incorrectly, but only about five percent. If it's an English exam then you could lose more marks but you can still get 95 percent, so I wouldn't worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar just before you sit examinations. If you've not got a grasp of it now through all of your schooling, you're not going to learn it between now and the examination itself. Don't worry about it, you can still get an A*.

How important is presentation?

The importance of presentation depends on the examination that you're taking. Obviously, if you've done a neat presentation, it's easier on the eye and the examiner probably feels a bit better about looking at your work, but unless presentation is stated as one of the aims in the syllabus it's generally not marked. If you've answered a question in a logical way and presented it as it would be expected to be presented, then it makes it easier for the examiner to mark. However, if you've got all of the answers in, and it's not logically presented, but yet you've got the answers, then you'll still get the marks in the exam.

What should I do if I have a problem in an exam?

Well, if you feel unwell, for example, there are procedures which can be gone through. You need to report it to the person that is supervising the examination and tell them what the problem is and, depending on what it is, they will take appropriate action. It might even be somebody else that's annoying you in the examination. For example, it could be an invigilator, the person supervising an examination, with squeaky shoes. I once had that experience myself. He'd walk down to the bottom of the room, across the bottom of the room and up to its top and repeated that exercise and kept doing that, and it was distracting me. And I said to the invigilator at that time, "Would you mind not doing that?" and, of course, he stopped then. The thing is, the people there to supervise the examination are there to make sure that you get the correct situation for you to take the examination, and to make sure that you're not disturbed in any way. So, it might even be a noise outside, so, in matters like that, please report these and see what can be done about it, but if it is an illness that you have, if you feel unwell, then that needs to be reported too, and it can be taken into consideration later on in the process.

I felt unwell in the exam and don't think I did as well as I could have, what can I do?

Well, you need to report that to your teacher and say what was wrong, what your condition was. If the school supports what you are saying, and this is an important point, you can't contact the examining board yourself. Everything's got to be done through the school. So if you've had an illness, and you've got a doctor's certificate or you've been to the doctor earlier that day, or you've got a condition that recurs, that might already been known to the school or you need to make it known to the school, and they will report it to the examining board and special consideration can be given as long as the school backs up what you are saying.