Accommodation Not Applied in the Oral
Candidate 5 has a documented anxiety condition and a mild stammer. The approved accommodation is 10 minutes' preparation instead of 5 and permission to use brief notes for the first two minutes of the 12-minute oral. On the day, the relief examiner gives only 5 minutes and removes the notes, saying: 'We don't allow notes.' The candidate freezes for 40 seconds, speaks for 3 minutes, then answers only two questions. The examiner scores 4/10. The candidate's teacher, who is not the examiner, says the candidate would normally score 7/10. The oral is not recorded; the examiner's notes are sparse. The school's appeals window is 10 days. The candidate needs 6.0 to pass the subject.
1. What immediate remedy is appropriate, and should the 4/10 stand?
Read the worked answer
The 4/10 should not be treated as final until the procedural failure is reviewed. The approved accommodation was not applied, so the assessment conditions were not the agreed conditions. That does not automatically prove the candidate would have scored 6.0, and the teacher's predicted 7/10 is not by itself reliable evidence. The examinations officer should be informed immediately. The fairest remedy is usually a re-examination with different material and the correct accommodation, not an informal mark uplift, because an uplift would be based on speculation and would be hard to defend. If a re-examination is impossible within the appeals window, the school should seek guidance from the board and document the failure. The original 4/10 should be suspended pending that decision. The candidate should be told plainly what went wrong, what will happen next, and by when. The relief examiner's sparse notes make the original score harder to defend, but they do not justify inventing a new mark without evidence.
2. How should the school prevent recurrence and handle the appeal?
Read the worked answer
The appeal should record: the approved accommodation, the examiner's failure to apply it, the candidate's observable freeze, the sparse notes, and the proposed remedy. The school should not rely on the teacher's 7/10 as the decisive fact; it may support the appeal but cannot replace a properly conducted assessment. Prevention requires an accommodation checklist attached to the candidate's timetable, a pre-exam briefing for relief examiners, and a named contact who can resolve queries before the oral starts. The examiner should also be trained not to remove notes without checking the candidate's file. If the re-examination goes ahead, use unfamiliar material of comparable difficulty and confirm the accommodation in writing. After the decision, send the candidate a clear outcome and retain the records for the appeal period. The key judgement is that fairness requires correcting the procedure first, then assessing the candidate under the correct conditions, rather than adjusting the score to fit an expected outcome.