Illness, Extension, and the External Examination
Rui is a Portuguese continuers student whose external examination is in three weeks. He misses two weeks of school with a confirmed illness and returns with a medical certificate. His teacher has completed all school assessment, and Rui's internal marks are solid but not exceptional. Rui asks whether his illness can improve his external exam result, and whether the school can adjust anything now. He also mentions that a private tutor has offered to 'predict' the exam topics and drill him on likely questions.
1. What can and cannot be adjusted at this stage, and what should the teacher advise?
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School assessment is complete; the external examination is run by the external authority, not the school. The teacher cannot alter the exam or the marking.
What is possible:
- If Rui's illness affected his ability to prepare, the relevant provisions are the external authority's special-provision or misadventure processes, which must be applied for through the school's designated contact with documentation. The teacher should direct him to that process and the deadlines.
- The school cannot retrospectively change internal marks to compensate for exam preparation.
- The teacher should not encourage topic prediction. Advise Rui that the exam assesses the full course; drilling guessed topics narrows his range and risks poor performance on unseen texts and tasks.
Better advice: focus remaining time on the exam's known structure and skills - comprehension, response in Portuguese, text production - and practise under timed conditions.
2. How should the teacher handle the tutor's 'prediction' offer?
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The teacher should be clear and non-judgemental. Predicting exam topics is not cheating, but it is poor preparation strategy and can create false confidence.
Points to make:
- The external exam samples the whole course; a tutor guessing topics cannot know the paper.
- Over-drilling narrows vocabulary and structures, which hurts performance on unexpected texts.
- If the tutor is drilling past-paper-style questions, that is legitimate practice - the issue is 'prediction', not practice.
- The teacher can offer the student the syllabus structure and the skills the exam rewards, so he can direct tutoring toward genuine skill-building.
- Document the conversation briefly in case the family later asks why the school discouraged the tutor's approach.