My extra time was taken away.

Hi!
I'll start with a bit of context first. I am extremely likely to have ADHD (My mum has it and I have a lot of the symptoms so I'm going through the process of getting diagnosed, but it's taking a while because of the NHS wait times and all that) and potentially Autism which my sister has.
I'm 16 and am very quickly approaching my GCSEs.
Now here's where the problem lies. Ever since basically the start of Y11 I've had extra time. We had a parents evening and they requested to speak to the SEN lady because of my testing and the fact that I was likely not going to be diagnosed with anything prior to my exams.
My parents explained the situation and she basically just said ok so what accommodations do you think you would need? I said that extra time and being able to wear my loops (since I have glasses so full ear defenders give me headaches) would be best, since I get easily distracted or irritated by noises and often struggle to manage my time effectively.
She said that it would be possible for me to have those arrangements and that she would get it sorted.
From then on I had ET. I would come back during lunch breaks to finish assessments and would use almost all of my ET for basically all of my subjects, since the given time was never enough for me.
And then we had mocks in January. I was given my 25% ET, and got to have my loops. In all but 6 of my exams I used at least half, if not all of my ET. There were even 2 exams (Drama and English Lang) where I didn't finish the paper, even with every second of my ET.
I did actually end up going to the SEN people and asking for rest breaks too, since I realised that I either get really fidgety and need to just move, or my body thinks "Hey you've been in the same spot for a while now so it's sleep time" and I end up having to fighe back sleep after like an hour of exam time. So I now have rest breaks, but have never used them in an exam.
Fast forward to mid March, where a lady comes in to basically test whether we actually need extra time or not. She gets me to read out a bunch of random words and letters, do quick comprehension, and reads strings of words and letters to me, that I then have to repeat.
After this? She says I don't need ET.
I explain to her that I struggle with exams, since I lose focus, struggle with processing long blocks of text, lose track of my thoughts easily, get distracted and overestimulated by movement and noise around me and struggle with time management (I once spent half an hour on a question that you're meant to spend a maximum of 12 mins on, and didn't finish the exam because of it).
She said the only way I'd get ET is if the school applied through a special circumstances route, and that from what I was saying, sticking with the rest breaks and loops would probably be fine.
I honestly (stupidly) believed her but now I'm getting closer to my *real* exams and realising that I don't know if I'm actually going to get through them. I'm scared that I won't finish them and it's making me very very anxious.
If anyone has any advice on trying to manage your time in exams or cope with some of the anxiety it would be great.
I'm sorry this is such a long post but thank you for reading it and hearing my story.
And if you're also going to be doing your GCSEs soon, or even just any exams really, I wish you the best of luck <3

Reply 1

DerDracologe

Study Forum Helper

Im sorry that youve been put in this situation, it must feel horrible.
In exceptional circumstances schools are allowed to complete what is called a form 9 (you will already have one for rest breaks at your current school) and use your referral letter for an adhd assessment as evidence. It is ridiculous that this wasn’t done at the time (the member of staff in question clearly did not read the regulations…). Your school may still be able to do this actually but it will need to be processed online.
I would urge you to ask them to complete this form asap! If it is not approved due to being processed after the deadline then my advice would be to make time plans to prioritise the marks you will be able to get and use your rest breaks effectively (such as to break up tasks to make sure you dont run out of stream half-way through a question and slow your speed of working).
I really hope you are able to sort this out before your exams. Best of luck with them!
Btw i has rest breaks and used loops in my GCSEs last year so if you have questions about those arrangements id be happy to try to answer 🙂