Schoolchildren face further disruption in their exams this summer because of a shortage of invigilators, which unions are blaming on a fear of catching Covid in ‘unsafe’ school environments. MailOnline has more.
A warning from the Association of School and College Leaders says the shortfalls are having to be covered by other staff as well as parents on some occasions.
The union thinks the lower number of invigilators is down to them finding alternative work coupled with concerns over contracting coronavirus in schools.
But despite the ASCL sounding the alarm, the Department for Education said it was confident schools could cope – insisting they would have “robust plans in place”.
ASCL General Secretary Geoff Barton said invigilator shortages meant schools had to train their own staff to do it.
He added: “It is also clear that there are sufficient difficulties in recruiting enough invigilators. It would obviously reassure these staff if free Covid testing was available for exam students and we once again appeal to the government to make this simple and obvious provision.
“We also have to question whether it is right to continue to subject young people to such a huge number of high-stakes terminal exams at GCSE as is the case in the current system.
“Stress and anxiety were already problems pre-pandemic. It must surely be possible to slim down the exam system and make it more proportionate and humane.”
Usually every 30 students need to have one invigilator covering them, but the number has been increased to 40 due to the shortfall.
Rules forbidding teachers from supervising their own subjects have also been relaxed.
Somehow I suspect that the main reason is the general worker shortage, while the gripe about Covid safety is just the usual OTT health and safety moaning from the unions.
Worth reading in full.
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They’re an odd bunch, invigilators. I don’t know where they go when there aren’t exams happening. When there are, they come into school with their own brand of snarky officiousness and scare everybody, including teachers. Who’d have thought they were actually terrified of children’s sniffles!
I invigilate from time to time for extra income and it fits in around my family and weekend work. I don’t possess snarky officiousness and very much keep myself to myself. I invigilate mainly for children with access arrangements who need a scribe or a reader or many rest breaks. I’ve never worn a mask in the 3 schools I work in and I’ve pushed back on ALL covid restrictions the schools have put in place. The other invigilators do talk behind my back and i know I’m deemed a conspiracy theorist which is fine with me whilst they dose themselves up on gunk every few months and then talk about how mysteriously family and friends are falling sick all over the show. Out of possibly 40 or so invigilators I’ve come across just one with the same mindset as myself. So crisisgarden please put the broad brush away, there are good ones out there.
Broad brush put away. I can’t complain about everyone making generalisations about teachers’ conduct during the last two years, and then do the very same about invigilators. Rank hypocrisy- my apologies!!
That’s alright, you don’t need to apologise to a fellow sceptic. I have noticed the schools cannot recruit new invigilators and they’ve tried all sorts, even referral fees to current invigilators. I did notice if I ever worked in the sports hall or larger venues where there are up to circa 150 students sitting their exams that certainly the “older” generation invigilators would go nowhere near the children and couldn’t fathom how I dare to crouch down next to a child at a desk to speak with them. Masks in schools still persist for some teachers and some children. I’ do make a point of saying that “ you don’t need to wear that thing on your face when i”m invigilating for you”. Kind of gives me a feeling that I’m a goodie working undercover to overcome evil.
‘Kind of gives me a feeling that I’m a goodie working undercover to overcome evil.’
👊 That makes two of us. We are educational white hats!
Bring the brush out again,
My daughter is sitting her exams right now. She turned up in very good time, but due to a mix up was unsure of the correct hall she should be in. She spoke to a teacher who sorted it out and escorted her into the hall, still in good time, only to be confronted by an invigilator with a clipboard, who told the teacher that they must wait until everyone else was in and seated. Giving no reason why, my daughter was left to stand at the front of the hall waiting with the teacher until the invigilator decided she could take her seat. Even the teacher asked if she couldn’t just take her seat, “NO! she must wait.” Was all the old toad would say.
Thankfully my daughter doesn’t let that type of behaviour get the better of her, but for others it would be very intimidating.
Old toad indeed.
You’d have thought an invigilator’s main aim would be to put children at ease while they were being examined. Does not seem the be the case (although MartBee may beg to differ!)
I think that’s a benefit of a good invigilator, but a clipboard’s a clipboard, the officialdom that comes with it must be obeyed.
That’s exactly what they should be doing CG. Giving all children the best opportunity they can to showcase their learning. Sadly like in all walks of life too many are on a power trip and the clipboard is their weapon. We must continue to push back against them all!
What could the invigilator had done had the teacher taken your daughter to her seat?
The clipboard tyrants strike again.
I was hated by many senior officers when I was in the police because I openly defied their ridiculous pomposity and petty, made up rules.
That’s certainly earned my respect.
Generalisations can be unfair and useful.
It rather sounds like you’re confirming the instant example.
Functionaries from the academic-sino-globalist-complex calling for a return to mass testing of healthy people as this would reassure (and force-masking them would obviously be even more reassuring, we already know that one) someone doesn’t imply that anybody is afraid of antything, just that some people badly want their pandemic back.
Sometimes they get satisfaction from swishing around in black capes or cape-like clothing.
I recall meeting one in particular who thought he was the bee’s knees and who was leveraging every little bit of information he’d read on his form – including the exact date of a pupil’s birthday – to show what an alpha and insider he was.
But it would be unfair to stereotype them. I’ve met some who have been very sweet and human.
The ones I know are all retired schoolteachers. It is a nice little earner to boost their meagre pensions.
Yes, I was unfair in my earlier comment. I’ve had some bad run-ins with various invigilators over the course of my career!
What does an invigilator actually do?
I am more than willing to be one, if it helps.
Since I have not been jabbed I am a pureblood, not a mudblood. How do I apply??
Us pure bloods are unclean and a health hazard.
They make sure exams run for the right amount of time; that nobody cheats by for example referring to smuggled-in notes, reading reminders written on their hands, or talking with other candidates; they ensure candidates have enough writing paper and any other supplies they are supposed to have, such as tracing paper; they make sure that candidates are not seated too near each other; they crack open the bags containing the exam papers just before the exam starts, etc. It is proper work.
Schools still find all sorts of ways to cheat, though. Cheating by schoolteachers is endemic.
I reckon I could train a herding breed of dog to do the majority of that.
The government certainly did a good job of terrifying people away from work.
As for what invigilators do: they play slow Pac-Man with each other as they walk between the desks. Seriously, they do! I heard it discussed on Radio 4 a few years ago, so it must be true.
You’ll be able to find information online. If not, just call some schools to find out what you need to do.
Most of mine in the 70’s were OK. Some could be seen puling faces at the pupils who had completely screwed up an answer.
Would it be they want more money for sitting quietly for a few hours?
If they are short of an invigilator or two I might offer my services.
I have zero fear of catching covid and might make a bob or two. Wonder what the pay is like? But then you’d probably have to be fully vaccinated or at the very least do daily covid testing, so that would be a no then.
Besides it is sunny out – would hate to miss my chances of making some vitamin D!
But if they have all been vaccinated, surely…. they have nothing to fear from COVID?
Unless…unless…does the vaccine not prevent infection or transmission?
Surely we should be told if that is the case?
This is the core insanity in all this. If they believe in the damn jabs, why do they care if others have been jabbed or not?
People whose actual behaviour indicates that they know the shots don’t stop infection nonetheless insist that others be just as uselessly (and dangerously) injected.
I have tried explaining this to nervous members of the jabbed category, but they simply look confused. It makes me wonder what the injections do to their brains.
I rather liked a snippet from a piece in TCW today from a Kiwi who was bemoaning the covid fascism from which the islands still suffer. It used the term ‘stolen their immunity’ with regard to how most jabbees regard the unjabbed.
Quite how these people trust in an injection of vax and then don’t is a puzzle that may take some understanding. It must surely be heading for ‘Syndrome’ status?
In current conditions there are all too many examples of widespread incomprehension of basic logic, such as that A and not-A can’t both be true, or that if B can result from A, and we all know that B is true, that doesn’t mean that A must be true.
My current favourite example is the Food Standards Authority’s advice to supermarket companies that it’s fine if they offer falsely-labelled food for sale – items labelled as containing sunflower oil that don’t. Most “educated” people whom I’ve told about this just repeat the official “reason”, which is that such false labelling enables “products” to continue to be sold. Oh and apparently the substitutes aren’t very harmful. Which is kinda irrelevant.
You and I know that a “product” is different from its packaging and label. Pouring a replacement product into the old container doesn’t make it become the old product. Until recently one would have thought that was obvious to almost everybody, and only worth repeating to the village idiot. But not now it isn’t.
Last week it was clear that Prince Charles is suffering from Parkinson’s disease or something symptomatically very similar. This 73-year-old man was rocking back and forth on his throne. Journalists probably look at him and see him sitting as steadily as anything, because they haven’t been given the OK to think otherwise. (But if it were Vladimir Putin…)
People don’t like to admit they were ever bamboozled. They will rationalise like the blazes to avoid admitting it. They are mentally downtrodden and they are scared.
This all leads to a very dark place socially.
Considering all the tete-a-tetes with plants that Chuck must have had over the years, I’d have thought Gardeners’ Question Time disease might be likelier.
Prince Charles ought to be healthy at age 73 … his gin-loving granny lived to 102 or so. Or has he been hanging out with a bad crowd (aka Klaus Schwab, Juri Harari & Bill Gates) and taking the wrong sort of drugs?
UK-wide, I think the policies could have been designed to give people permanent depression, i.e. the opposite of what we managed in the 1960s and 1970s …
https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/
In the 21st.C, can Americans in particular sue a government that denies them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Apparently mind-bending drugs will be on offer at the Davos knees up later this month.
Mr. Gates dealing again.
“the Food Standards Authority’s advice to supermarket companies that it’s fine if they offer falsely-labelled food for sale – items labelled as containing sunflower oil that don’t. Most “educated” people whom I’ve told about this just repeat the official “reason”, which is that such false labelling enables “products” to continue to be sold. Oh and apparently the substitutes aren’t very harmful. “
I was incandescent when I read that (in the news, not your post Star) – so you can have a label saying a product containing X – when instead it contains Y or Z – what about the people with allergies??? some of which can be life threatening, like the teenager who died on the plane after eating a roll which didn’t specify it contained something she was allergic to?
What about others for whom some ingredients while they may not necessarily be allergens, they may be toxic to them?
“If they believe in the damn jabs, why do they care if others have been jabbed or not?”
This has been explained before. Person A who has been jabbed is less likely to catch the virus, and less likely to spread it (so they say). If Person B has not been jabbed Person A has more chance of catching The Virus from Person B. However, if Person B has been jabbed, Person A has less chance of catching The Virus off Person B.
The ‘Covid vaccines’ do not protect you 100%. Apart from when someone like Devi Sridhar tells you they do.
In my personal experience the brains of the multi-jabbed are a gonner by this stage.
I am finding it hard not to believe that there is something in the jabs designed to have this intended effect.
The unjabbed are freaks of nature (in a good way though) because we investigate and question things and think for ourselves.
It shows they have lost faith in the jabs and that is a good thing for us Sceptics – welcome on board sheeple.
I guess you don’t need GCSE science to invigilate.
If they are that dumb, can’t we find some other low IQ person to do the job?
No let’s make the exam process less competitive and easier to cheat.
The slow decay of Western Civilisation accelerates again.
Exams come from China 🙂
I could do with a bit of invigilating. What a perfect opportunity to wind up some teachers.
No offence intended CG.😀
none taken!!
phantom downticker out in force for this article!!!
We’ve got boatloads of potential invigilators arriving daily. No doctors or engineers, but making sure that one spotty 15 year old isn’t passing answers to another, well, surely they can manage that much..?
Haven’t exams always been “socially distanced” – long before that was a thing.
My postman and binmen could be relied upon to be invigilators if they need someone to do the job – I got my letters delivered and my bins emptied even before the jabs and at the height of the ‘pandemic’ – covid didn’t seem to bother them at all.
You see, this is what you get with vulgar manual workers, JPT.
Ditto, our younger son, a mere shop worker.
I bet you still have the same dustmen as you did pre pandemic too.
Binmen are immune to everything.
The key sentence is
It would obviously reassure these staff if free Covid testing was available for exam students and we once again appeal to the government to make this simple and obvious provision.
[ASCL general secretary Geoff Barton]
Apparently, the ASCL badly wants force-testing of healthy pupils back in order to generate more COVID cases. In an ideal universe, this guy should immediately be relieved of his post and an investigation started to determine why he wants to restart the COVID circus by recommencing mass testing of healthy people. Not to mention that routinely forcing someone to undergo a physically unpleasant and possibly, even harmful procedure is torture. And torturing other people’s children in order to cause as much harm as possible to the country is certainly not among his job duties or – for that matter – among the the things any upright person should be desire to do or anybody should be allowed to do.
NB: This is not a harmless transgression and nothing in this text is overstated.
“We also have to question whether it is right to continue to subject young people to such a huge number of high-stakes terminal exams at GCSE as is the case in the current system.”
Schoolteachers hate it when a child does better in an externally-marked exam than they want them to. What they’d love is if they themselves could decide all grades. They’ve been pushing in that direction for decades.
There is no way on this God’s Earth that I would want my daughter’s teachers marking her exams. The fact she was practically the only kid in her year not wearing a mask, refusing to take tests home, not sanitising her hands, and not fawning all over them, wouldn’t make them mark her fairly I imagine.
A daughter to be proud of, Dante.
I once spent a week at a science academy. How I laughed when the head of science told the a level students that blood is blue when it is in its deoxygenated form in the veins 🤣.
I remember my GCSE English exam had a final creative writing question that wanted me to ‘describe the room you are in‘.
I wrote how I appeared like one of many robots scribing away while the invigilators quietly skulked down the aisles, trying to choose the most succulent prey before time ran out and we all escaped.
Just pathetic
There is….nothing like a test!…….A general theme developing here. There was once an idea, an idea so unbelievable that it would need to be staged in a far away place where all the actors were so insanely enthusiastic about following rules that it would scare the world ‘shirtless’ but before it could be born (metaphorically speaking) a test was needed and not just any test, one that couldn’t be countered, one that was so cunning you could sharpen a pencil with it………and later that day in a far away place, the virus that wasn’t, (later to be known by all as covid 19), was born.
obviously reassure these staff if free Covid testing was available for exam students and we once again appeal to the government to make this simple and obvious provision.
so adults are now afraid of teens now are they? the spectacle of needing a “health test” to take a school exam
This came from the general secretary of the association of school and college leaders. This guy has no direct organizational relation to any school or college and is certainly neither involved with hiring invigilators nor has ever spoken to one. That’s just a general call for a return to mass testing of healthy pupils (these tests being paid for by the government being prerequisite for that) using some current pretext.
Fears of having to work for a living, more like.
Fire those who refuse to do their job.
And apply same standard to GPs
Yes, they should stop being doctators
If there’s a job in the world that is more soul-grindingly boring than invigilating,I hope I never had to do it.
In the school I taught in thirty years ago, all the invigilating was done by staff. Nobody was b(r)ought in.
I couldn’t have put it better myself, Annie! A non teacher friend tried to get me to do some a few years back (I’ve been out of teaching for many years) and couldn’t understand why I was appalled at the idea. After one week he realised what he’d let himself in for and gave up.
Aw come on. A good book, flask of coffee and some digestives.
Feet up, a bit of glaring and some exercise every 20 minutes.
I could even manage to index my emails and probably catch up on some Netflix.
How totally pathetic- it seems wimp Teachers are now ‘over’ as serious ‘professionals’ – if they ever were.
I suppose the Multigenderism, Critical Race Theory and green and purple hair and tattoos designed apparently to “Save the Planet” don’t do much for them.
On the bright side, the least contact this particular brand of the profession have with our children the better!
Here we go. Another union-inspired grandstand. Wonder if these invigilators have: attended a pub with friends, been to a restaurant, a cinema, a shop? my guess is that they’re living their lives as normal until it comes to doing their f***ing job and then they remember covid.
Total rubbish, this is just 1970s Trades Unionism ‘working to rule’ and ‘demanding new conditions’.
What’s the matter with these seemingly educated folk. Don’t they know all they have to do is wear a face nappy and they’ll be perfectly safe?
When I was at school, teachers invigilated exams. After all, they weren’t teaching their O and A level classes were they?!
Teachers finally get close to the aim of getting paid for not actually teaching (like facility time). They can get rid of exams, and course work and just tell the kids what they should think, and be.