One on One

I invigilated the Nat 5 German exam today.  And for all of two seconds I debated attempting the paper myself.  Then I remembered I was in a 1-to-1 room, which meant I pretty much had the option of reading my own book for the entire duration of both the Reading and Writing, and Listening exams, which absolutely beat the fleeting thought of resitting a Standard Grade equivalent German exam!

I do love the 1-to-1 rooms, and haven't really been given that 'job' since my first round of invigilating three years ago.  Once they settled you in and lull you in to a false sense of ease and 'reading time' in a 1-to-1 room, they then throw you in to rooms with 32 kids with three different finish times (due to differing additional needs) and three different methods of sitting the paper (physical paper, self referred to a laptop, actual online paper), with at least 3 different kids in each exam who have forgotten a pen or their candidate number or to leave their phone in their bag, or some such nonesens.  Still, I'd rather that the boredom of sitting in the massive gym hall with 100 candidates and 4 other invigilators.  So anyway, I totally thought I'd lucked out today.

Until an hour in to the first exam when the online paper went blank.  Which meant for an hour both IT and Additional Support were working out how to get it back, while I sat alone in a tiny room with an S4 girl finding things to talk about and 'keeping her calm'.  Though in fairness she was totally calm anyway.  When they finally managed to download it all the work was lost so the exam restarted and she was given the full amount of time again.  Which already meant I was 1.5 hours behind schedule. Not a huge loss, I didn't have plans that couldn't be changed for the rest of the day, but it was an awful lot of sitting in a smal room without a hint of daylight!  When the candidate had finally finished the first paper, everyone else's second paper had already finished, so she then had to be kept in a room all by herself till the second exam began.  Queue more problems, a change in rooms, a hard wire connection to the laptop, and the eventual start of the listening exam.  It ended up a looong day... though I'd still take a 1-to-1 room over anything else!