Secondary school leaders are being warned over higher workloads this summer as a survey suggests more than three-fifths of exams officers are considering leaving their position.
The additional workload involved in this summer’s exam series is causing 62 per cent of exams officers to consider their position, according to a survey by the National Association of Exams Officers.
Of the 38 per cent who were not considering their position, the vast majority still felt “changes were needed”, the survey of 1,134 respondents found.
The problems raised by respondents included “rooming” - meaning finding areas for pupils to take the exams - as well as “volume” of workload, “parental pressure for separate rooming” and candidates “with anxiety”.
Those exams officers surveyed also highlighted issues with awarding bodies, such as “constant changes”, “systems crashing”, and “late changes to admin support guides with no notification of when changes were made”.
Exams officers also expressed frustration over “lengthy wait times on helplines” and “staff on helplines not knowing the answers”.
Problems with Parcelforce Worldwide not collecting scripts, which Tes revealed exclusively last week, were also raised.
Impact on leaders
Glyn Potts, headteacher at Blessed John Henry Newman RC College in Oldham, told Tes he lost his school’s exams officer before the start of exams.
This had left an assistant headteacher to do “all the training and prep”, he said. Although the school now has a replacement, the senior leadership team is still “doing more” than Mr Potts would wish.
For example, timetabling pressures and the number of locations for exams have meant that Mr Potts has had to take some lessons off the assistant headteacher so they can continue to support the exams officer.
He said he believes that pressures on exams officers will continue to worsen over the coming years, due to the “peaks and troughs” during exam season becoming more pronounced.
The pressure of the job has become “larger and larger” in recent years due to a move away from coursework and an increased focus on exams, he added.
Inexperience
Tim Fisher, chair of the National Association of Examinations Officers, told Tes that the organisation estimated more than half of all exams officers working this summer had not previously delivered a summer exams series and “have no experience of the major challenge of delivering exams across a range of subject areas and qualifications over a six-week period”.
Other factors causing particular difficulties this year, Mr Fisher said, included “a lack of support” in areas such as “accommodating the growing number of access arrangements students”, “pressure from parents” for separate rooming and “adapting to different processes across several awarding organisations”.
The chair warned that the loss of an exams officer should “not be underestimated” by schools.
He said the replacement of an exams officer will mean “added responsibility” - and workload - placed upon senior leadership teams in the management, administration and conducting of examinations within their centre.
Warning over fines
As new exams officers become familiar with regulations, processes and deadlines, there will be an “increased likelihood of malpractice and general administrative errors”, which could lead to “financial penalties” for schools, he warned.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the survey findings were “concerning”.
He said that some of the workload “will be driven by the specific set of prevailing circumstances” at this time, with “a large number of candidates experiencing stress and anxiety in the aftermath of the pandemic and requiring separate rooms in which to take their exams”.
“What is frustrating is that this seems to then be compounded by a list of problems with exam boards in terms of processes and communications,” he added.
Mr Barton said that the exam boards “must take note of these issues and address them for the future”.
In response, a spokesperson for the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) thanked exam officers for “their hard work and commitment to ensuring the smooth running of the first summer exam series since 2019”.
The JCQ recognised the ”crucial role” exam officers perform and acknowledged that some requirements “may feel burdensome, especially to those who are new to the role”.
Extra support had been provided to help exams officers this year, on top of social media campaigns for exams officers and students “to help them during the summer 2022 exam series”, the spokesperson added.
