Exams Officer of the Year

Highlights from The Exam Man podcast, Season 2 Episode 18

Just before the start of the summer break, we were joined by Kirsty Wilson, Exams Manager at The Cherwell School in Oxford. She is also the Exams Officer of the Year for 2024. We spoke to her a little bit about how she won the award, what it means and how she is going to use it over the course of the year to support and benefit other Exams Officers and to promote the profession and the work that we do.

So how was your end of term, Kirsty, and what are plans for the summer break?

We actually finish Wednesday lunchtime, but today is my last day, because I'm going to take a bit of toil for the last day and a half. My family live in Spain, so I'm going to go out and see them. It's always nice to get that extra day where it's just slightly cheaper to fly. And we've got to be back in time for exam results, which always eats into your summer holiday quite a lot, doesn't it? I've got two weeks out there and then that gives me time when I get back to make sure everything's ready and processed, ready for results days and things. There's a lot to do, though people think that you're done because the exams are over! Obviously I always take my work laptop with me, because there's always something that comes through whilst you're away, like malpractice things. I don't think there's ever time off as an Exams Officer. I finished on Friday but everything just seemed to be going right up until the end. There’s never any sort of feeling of “Oh, we'll just wind down now.” We finished doing mocks on Thursday. We do two weeks of 12s and two weeks of 10s straight after the main exams. We're quite a big school with a sixth form. We've got 350 people in our year 13, and then the same in year 12, and then about 300 in each year group other than that. So it's big.

Do you have a team around you, or is it just you?

I have an exams assistant, Hillary. She's fantastic. We’re like an old married couple really! Whereas she sometimes gets bogged down in detail, I'll try and look at the big picture which works well. I also have an amazing core of about 40 really good invigilators. My lead invigilators are brilliant and they've been with me for five years or so, and are brilliant at training the other invigilators that come along.

How did you come into the role, and how long have you been at your school?

I started invigilating when my children were really little. I just did the odd bit of invigilating that fitted in around what they did, and then I concentrated on this one school because I was doing two different schools. Then the exams assistant left and I ended up taking on that role from being lead invigilator. I did that for two years and then the Exams Officer left, and I was adamant that I was not going to take on this job! There was no way!

I was doing a course in personal training at the time so I wasn’t going to drop my hours- I wanted to go back to invigilating because I wanted to take up my job as a personal trainer. And I was very, very adamant that I was not going to be an Exams Officer. Then we went through so many interviews, cycles of interviews, trying to get someone to take the role on. It just wasn't working and eventually they said they’d just take on someone that can do admin and I could train them up to be the Exams Officer. I thought that seemed ridiculous, so then I took it on. I thought, I'll see how it goes. Here I am five years later.

That's interesting because quite a lot of the people we've spoken to have fallen into the role without really knowing what it entailed. But you really knew!

I really knew, which is why I didn't want to do it. It was way too stressful. But it means I do understand where the invigilators come from, I do get what they do. And I think Hilary said that was one thing when she filled out the form for Exams Officer of the Year, that she said I do really try and fight for the rights of my invigilators. When the school sends out this survey or that survey I ask - can I get my invigilators involved in that as well? And I get them involved in lots of other things around the school. They help out with the administration in sixth form. They help out with various things in the sixth form office. With 40 invigilators, you get really quiet times of the year where they want to be involved. And so that way they can do bits and bobs as well. And I realized that our school was paying them less than other schools in the area. So I dealt with our academy and tried to get that raised up. I think it's really important to try and see where they're coming from as well and try to sympathize with them.

With a big team like that you can have such a diverse group of people, so you've got a lot of different characters and personalities, and backgrounds and reasons for invigilating as well. We did quite a lot during COVID to get our invigilators more involved in the school and starting to feel like part of the staff. We gave them all a school email address so, if they wanted to look at them, they would get the whole staff emails and the bulletin at the start of the week. Just things that make them feel like they're part of the staff rather than separate to everybody else. That is something I'm looking into. I've had a bit of pushback against it from some of the invigilators because they've got other emails already, but I do think it's a really worthwhile thing to do. And going forward, I think it's something that I would try to get them to do because we're a very Google based school and it would just make life a lot easier because sometimes Google doesn't like talking to other email providers.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you love about the job, and also some of the challenges that you find about being an Exams Officer?

Someone did refer to it as a bit of an adrenaline sport, because when you are actually in the exam season I think it is. I like the problem-solving. I like the fact that I have this overview of such a massive machine, that people just instantly come to you, and I amaze myself sometimes that I can just instantly answer all these questions. That I know the details of some of the kids, and can say – “they're in that room” - and they say – “how on earth do you know that?!”

Like a witch or something? How do you have that bit of information? !

Now, no one has ever called me a witch before, but okay! Yes, that sort of stuff, I really love it.

If only the exam boards could stop making changes right up to just before the exams start. This year the fact that PDFs didn't work with computer readers had a massive impact on us. With so many kids in so many different rooms, we had to try to get their computer reader system working. And the IT problem that has been going on, and the fact that they didn't test their latest version of events. I think maybe some of the exam boards could think about that. It's so much planning ahead, isn't it? And logistics, and being ready for anything that comes in at the last minute. Because you're working with large numbers of children, you're always going to have that. You think you've thought of every contingency, don't you? If there's something that comes along, you're just like …. wow, I could never have foreseen that!

I do wear my running shoes and I literally sprint around the school. My personal trainer experience comes into practice. Everyone just finds it hilarious. For the computer reader issue I was just running from one room to another, to another, just to put the little code in that you needed for each of the papers. So your step count goes up quite well. You don't need to go running too much.

So you are now officially Exams Officer of the Year, Kirsty. I was wondering if you could talk us through the process by which you got the award?

I don't really know. I saw the emails from the Exams Office but I'm not one for bigging myself up. I just delete the emails. But my exams assistant forwarded it to my line manager. I have a really good support network here. He then filled that out. And there are other Exams Officers that I help out in nearby schools. One of them particularly used to work here and used to be our exams access coordinator before she went off to be Exams Officer somewhere else. And I think she filled it out about me as well. They look at it, and then I think they bring it down to a certain number. Then that number goes out to the exam boards who read all the applications. And then they decide. Since I became Exams Officer of the year, I've even had people from different exam boards phone me and congratulate me. And last year's winner phoned me from Cyprus and he was really lovely. So I've had a few people just contact me and it's been really, really lovely.

Did everyone in your school know about it as well? Did you get a nice response there?

My line manager obviously knew about it because when they tell you you’re top 10, they email out to the people who voted for you as well. Then when I won it, they were emailed as well. And I have since spoken to my line manager. I think they're planning on presenting to me in our end of term thing, but I won't be there. But I know my line manager is getting a proper frame for me to put my certificate up because at the moment it's just pinned up on my wall.

Now, Kirsty, you're obviously a very modest person, but do you know what things were said about you that may have led you to getting this award?

Well, I did ask my assistant to forward me what she wrote in the notes. Clearly, she took some sort of online thing about how to do some really good creative writing! But she did write about how I support their invigilators and how I fought to get their pay increased. She put about how I support other Exams Officers and I try to make myself available for that. And that's actually something that I want to use the Exams Officer title to do, to build the role of the Exams Officer as much as I can.

We're a massive school, but we're not special. Every school has their own problems and it doesn't matter what size you are, you have to try to overcome these when you're doing this job. It would be really nice if there was someone that has an overview of the schools within your area that can help advise people and perhaps be part of that contingency when an Exams Officer leaves or what have you. There is someone who understands the problems in that school and then can help train the next person. So I think those kind of things are the sort of things that she wrote that I would really like to do to develop the role and help other people.

I think Exams Officers are quite well networked. So it's almost pushing a bit of an open door with that stuff as well. It just needs to happen, doesn't it to share best practice and advice? And you hear about new Exams Officers who come in and it's too much and they leave. That's a real shame because there is so much expertise, so much support and so much understanding amongst Exams Officers about how hard the role can be. There is so much support out there, but I don't think people necessarily know how to access that. There’s the exam network groups that OCR do, even the Facebook groups are good, and the Exams Office, but there are a lot of people that just don't know where to go for help, and it would be good if there was something more or something better in place.

Obviously being an Exams Officer isn't for everyone so could you tell us, Kirsty, what you think are, the main skills and characteristics that will help you to be to be a really good Exams Officer?

Get some really good trainers! I think to be be an Exams Officer you really need attention to detail, but you also do need to look at the bigger picture. Sometimes attention to detail isn't always what you should be concentrating on. You actually need an overview of everything. So it's this big monster and you need to be able to control it. Every day during the summer season, I write a little blog. At the end of my day I try to reflect on it and try to put a positive spin on what's happened during the day. I send that out to everybody in the school, so all the teachers, all the sports staff see it. I think getting them to understand the extent of what you do is really important. If you're doing your job even vaguely well, they won't see what's going on.

They just see the swan, but you're paddling away. It’s quite a short blog, but there is just a little bit of a summary of what happened today, what's going on tomorrow. It tries to make me look at the positive sides of what we've done. If I can make someone smile, when they get into work the next day and just have a bit of an overview of what we do, that's communication. Communicating with people is really important.

That is amazing, because I think a lot of us probably complain about the fact that people don't understand what we do, and I'm probably guilty of this at times. But you can go out there and explain it - you don't have to sit there and just complain about it. It’s what we’ve been trying to do with the podcast as well. Exams Officers listen to this, but I hope that people more broadly in schools will listen and get a bit more of a flavour of what actually goes into this role. Because it is very complex, isn't it?

It is hugely complex. And so many people say to me, but what do you do? Your exams are on for just a few weeks. What do you do with the rest of the time? And I think maybe my husband has a vague idea of what it is I do, but other than that, I don't think many people know.

What about the sort of broader personality traits? Do you think there's anything that's particularly helpful in terms of how you confront situations?

It's really easy to get very frustrated at all the last minute changes eg; with rooming and access arrangements. So I think if there's ever a choice of whether you're going to laugh or cry, just laugh because you have to find the funny side of it. Always try not to get frustrated, try to have a positive outlook on things. I think that's the only thing that can really get you through a lot of time.

I guess that gets a bit easier when you've done it for a while as well, doesn't it? Because you think I've seen this before. I know it doesn't end in disaster. It's just one of those things. I think also accepting in your first year that it's going to take you at least a year to work out what it is you're doing. And then by the time you do it in the second year, you won't have remembered half of what you did in the first year anyway. So you need a couple of years under your belt before you even have a vague concept of what you're doing. I wonder if some of that as well is to do with expectations? Because the role is undersold a lot of the time, someone new coming into it is not expecting to have to deal with all these difficult situations and stresses. And so it comes as a shock, doesn't it? I think the amount of responsibility an Exams Officer has is huge. When it's sold as just an admin role it really is unfair. When they said to me they were just going to give it to someone from admin I thought - you can't do that!

The title definitely doesn’t explain it. It suggests a role that's just following orders, following a process. That's exactly right. I sign off as Exams Manager. You're a department head. There is no other department in my school that's as big as we are. Even if you forget the huge budget that we spend on exams, if you look at all the people that I employ, and the recruitment of invigilators which takes up so much time. And the training. And the troubleshooting that you're doing is in many ways in schools equivalent to, certainly a middle leader, but during exam times, definitely a senior leader in terms of making decisions.

When your school was trying to recruit Kirsty before you took the role on, what was the issue in finding somebody? What was not working? What was not happening?

They were trying to recruit an Exams Officer, and actually there’s not a huge pool of Exams Officers, are there? And it would take someone within your area, because most people don't want to commute too far. Nobody, for the amount that you get paid, wants to commute a long distance, especially given the hours that you work. So it didn't work and there weren't enough people applying. Or we got people applying who had hardly any experience even in a school. So we got a weird mix of people applying, who then didn't meet the criteria. So it’s great that your award is raising the profile about what the role is and what it really involves. And I think the more voices that are doing that, the better. I like the idea that you're approaching it as being an ambassador for the role for the year. It would be good to try and get the people who were the top 10 nominations involved in focus groups with JCQ and that sort of thing. Hopefully within a year something's going to improve whilst the 10 of us are sort of top 10 still, and we can get things progressing.

Stay in touch, and anything we can do to help while you're in the role, then we’re very happy to, but enjoy it. And congratulations. Enjoy Spain!

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