Amongst all the announcement filtering through from Boris, it is looking clear that I am assuming independent schools who have yet to do their long math and long English papers left may have to rethink having so many onsite? If schools are being asked to start a week later in secondary won't that mean exams taking place in the first week will also be impacted?
I'm getting very unsure, any thought insight would be helpful.

My son didn't sit habs, but having more than 600 on site in one day is some feat....I am aware a few years were off with covid already.

It's obvious those which have taken some first stage have some data, but what else can they do.

Here are the schools I know of who are scheduled to do standard format English and Maths in early January: St Albans boys, Habs girls, St Pauls boys, St Pauls girls, Westminster, Forest, Merchant Taylor, UCS and Latymer Upper.

Then there are the backup dates such as Habs boys for those who were in isolation 17/18th December and Highgate.

All, with the exception of Habs girls, have already done a first round and reduced numbers considerably. DG

But do you think if a national lockdown happens they will still take place? That's my concern, even with reduced numbers I'm guessing more than 300 will sit at each of these schools? And I'm assuming many boys will go to multiple schools in the week period....I'm curious do you think remote online invigilation might be used?

Add Merchant Taylors to that list, and with no first round.
St Albans Boys have done the VR paper, but everyone is doing the written papers as well - no reduction in numbers.

Habs Girls late decision to put the exam back to January, having got everyone ready to do it in December, is looking particularly foolish!

Westminster successfully used remote online invigilation for their sixth form applicants. That was about 500-600 students sitting the exams.

Edited for clarity

Wow.

How did that work?

The Oxford University Law finals this year cut down on a lot of questions with answers that could be accessed quickly as you are not able to see what the candidate is actually doing.

I am hoping an app will come along enabling you to take control of the student camera that you can then swing down onto their paper to see if they are cheating.

Cheating is a major problem in online classes or assessment. DG

I would more worry about the accessibility of the exam, of the schools are at all into widening access?

The technology is already there though - the schools could employ the same system as that used for the STEP exams. There are plenty of companies out there providing remote proctoring services.

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I don’t know what they did for students without access to the necessary technology. Everybody else was sent a link to a Swedish website tool for administering remote exams, which they had to test with a dummy test question in the week before the exams.

The students were also sent a Zoom link, this put them in an exam circle with an invigilator. DD was in a circle of about a dozen students for the invigilator to oversee.

On the day students receive the codes for their 4 papers. This exam web tool is maximised on the screen, it blocks copy/paste and has integrated plagiarism analysis, but it also immediately suspends the exam if the student goes to another tab, or tries to launch or run anything on their computer apart from the tool or otherwise tries to leave it. There is a facility to upload photos of handwritten answers on paper to the exam site, and to answer questions on screen (for example multiple choice), though most of DD’s exams were essay.

So the invigilator could watch the students work, and it would be hard to access additional resources without the teacher seeing. As far as cheating goes, I suppose that a student could create a “cheat sheet” of useful formulae and stick it around the border of their monitor, so that they could be looking at the screen while cheating, but the exam is not focused on rote memorisation of formulae anyway. It is focused on applying what you already know in a way you, by design, have never experienced before. So any benefit from such cheating would be strictly limited.

The exams were also slightly reduced to allow time for uploading.

Edited to add info

Well done Westminster.

I hope everyone will be that organised.

More DCs may get a chance to find out - Merchant Taylors has warned parents to be ready to do the 11+ at home if they can't go in to MTS or do it at their Preps in Jan.

I am assuming that if MTS is moving to online invigilation then city UCS, and any others left will also follow suit