Helping exams officers to run a successful summer exam series

The exams season means something different for everyone involved. For many students, the coming months will bring their first experience of high-stakes exams and teachers will be focussed on consolidating learning. Exams officers will be central to all the activity, ensuring everyone has the information they need to be at the right places at the right times.

Running exams is a tough job and one that requires all-year-round effort as well as particular challenges during the exam season. Ofqual recognises this and has been in discussions with exams officers since last summer to find ways we can help them run a smooth, incident-free series.

Working with exams officers, we have created some resources intended to support them to achieve this. These resources include:

• a film about the role of the exams officer to raise awareness of the important work they do among other school staff and parents
• a personal checklist students can use ahead of each exam

From our engagements with exams officers, we know that keeping mobile phones out of exams can be challenging for schools, so we’ve aggregated a list of the various measures some EOs use, to help share ideas. You can find that list, along with other exam resources, here.

These resources are part of our ongoing campaign to engage with those involved in running exams ‘at the chalk face’, recognising the valuable work they do to ensure exams run smoothly.

If you have any comments on the resources we have created, we welcome your feedback.