Anonymous
(submitted by an Exams Officer and Examscreen user in the East Midlands, September 2024)
Only the mocks? They should be less stress!
Surely that would be most people’s guess
But let me tell you a secret,
A secret only exam officers know:
Mocks are the WORST
(Worse than this poem’s flow)
Let’s have a look ahead at the mock fortnight,
It’s been kept free for exams, right?
We clash with the last day of term, two inset days,
6th form stuff and school concerts - I need a raise
…But somehow I’m on ‘Timetable FINAL V6’
I send to all staff, and that’s when it hits
"Can we change the timetable at the last minute?”
Take all your meticulous planning and bin it!"
“And classroom D63 that you’ve had booked for weeks,
We need it for science, get out of there peeps”
There’s not enough papers for English GCSE,
And I don’t know if I’ll ever get the ones from PE
D&T’s missing pages five, six and seven,
And the numbers start going backwards from page eleven.
No duration or code on the front cover,
With instructions like ‘Use a blue pen, or something, or other…’
The Spanish script and CD are a year apart,
Needless to say the exam doesn’t start
And the only department that’s failed to supply,
PDF papers is Computer Sci.
“Last year’s instructions are just fine for Music”
But the exam is homemade and I start to lose it
Geography’s figure four seems not to exist,
Do teachers check anything against any kind of list?
Business have shrunk theirs down to A5,
I may not make it out of this season alive
So when someone says: ‘Mocks, they must be easy!’
My head starts to hurt and I feel a bit queasy.