Tuesday, November 14

I've signed up to get involved in supervision of Higher School Certificate exams at Launceston College.  The exams run for 2 weeks and I've been rostered for 11 sessions.  It's tedious work and we're not allowed to read, do crosswords, use an iPad, listen to music or knit while we're on duty.  The guidelines also state that we are not allowed to sleep, which I thought might be self-evident.  In Tasmania, students sit the HSC exams in both Years 11 and 12, so some groups are quite large.  

On the first day,  my partner and I were allocated just one student, but she didn't turn up so we looked after a spill-over of 2 students from another group.  Their subject was Drama which I thought was mostly about performance, but they had to write at length for two hours.  Today, we had 32 for English, a three-hour paper.

Each student gets little booklets for the answers.  Some people write on both sides of the paper; others only write on one side.  We'd get smacked with s ruler if we wasted paper like that.  It did make me remember the pleasure of getting a pristine new exercise book at school.  I always resolved that this one would be the best ever.  Opening the first page, I would rule the margin very carefully, and write the words with great attention to detail.  And then I would turn the page and be faced with the impressions of the writing on the other side, and lose heart.  Of course, this was in the days when we wrote with pen and ink, and the ink was liable to seep through the page, marring the other side of the paper.

The pens we used were government issue, coarse wood with a cheap metal ferrule into which a cheap government nib was inserted.  I'm not sure how often we were given a new nib, but I bet it wasn't often enough.  The ink was manufactured on-site.  The ink monitors would tear open a paper packet of blue powder and mix up with a couple of gallons of water in a galvanised bucket, stirring with a wooden ruler.  The chances of making a mess, or have a calamitous accident were high.

The students are all different.  One young man is writing furiously and fluently, another is scratching his head, writing on the back of his hand and staring into space.  Some students write efficiently, others have lots of crossings-out and corrections. Even though things have changed, students are still expected to write their answers long-hand on paper, a system which hasn't changed for centuries. Sadly, I'm sure excellent students are slipping through the net because the challenges of the process do not play to their strengths.