Anyone who has recently sat their GCSEs will empathise with how aggravating the exam board regulations on mobile phones are. I mean, it’s understandable that you can’t have a phone in your pocket, since then you could cheat by looking at notes or pictures. It’s also understandable that you can’t have phones going off, or the exam hall would be filled with ringtones and it would be incredibly hard to concentrate. However, you’re not allowed your phone in your bag turned off with the battery out, and that, to me, seems nonsensical. How on Earth could anybody cheat using a phone that has had its battery removed and is on the other side of the hall in their bag? Assuming, that is, that they don’t have magical powers. After much consideration, I came to the conclusion that exam boards are just demonstrating their authority.
I can appreciate that it would be hard to ensure that everyone took their batteries out, but then it has been proved to be difficult to persuade everyone to leave their phones at home, no surprises there. I did leave my phone at home, just to be on the safe side, but generally speaking, teenagers need their phones. Not in a pathetic, techno-dependent manner (though I admit that some of us are like that), but in that they may have to catch three buses or journey forty or so minutes home, and if something goes wrong, they’re going to have to be able to let their families know somehow.
My school has tried to provide for those who need their phones during exam season by saying that you can leave yours with the year office for a charge of fifty pence, but the problem is that plenty of teenagers can’t afford to do that every day they have exams. If you had roughly fifteen days when you had exams, handing your phone in could end up costing you more than seven quid – and nobody wants to fork out seven quid when there is any reasonable hope of alternative measures.
So, plenty of kids at my school hid their phones in their pencil cases, zipper pockets, the bottom of their bag and prayed for the best. Obviously, the majority of people who did this had the sense to hide their phone properly and remove the battery. Everything was going swimmingly, until that one fateful day when, in the middle of a History paper, some idiot’s phone beeped to let us know they’d got a text. The invigilators gathered up all the bags in the vicinity of the noise, and after the exam they led the owners away and told them to confess to having their phones, saying a thorough bag check would follow. Honest people did admit to it, and some people lied and said they didn’t have theirs when they did. Unfortunately the ‘thorough bag check’ involved some vague groping of outside pockets, and a shortsighted invigilator peering into your bag and shuffling the contents around for a few seconds before grunting the all clear. This meant that only those who had been honest were punished, and throughout the school rumours were heard that they had had their papers ripped up. Teachers confirmed to us that three people had had their papers torn to shreds, but refused to clarify the circumstances thereof.
Strikes me as a little unfair. After this incident, our bags were properly rifled through pre-examination, so we did all have to leave phones at home or hand them in, no escaping it. It was either that or trusting your one acquaintance who was in school but didn’t have an exam, and there is always the niggling voice in the back of your head whispering, “Ebay” when they offer to take care of it.
Therefore I hope the exam boards are satisfied with the unnecessary grief they have caused through what can only, from my point of view, be considered stubbornness – nobody hiding a phone with the battery removed could have stood to gain anything mark-wise by doing so, but those few who decided to risk it for the sake of convenience and were caught out by chance were, if rumours are to be believed, ‘made an example of’ at the cost of their grades and their dignity after refusal to mark their papers. By all means, punish those who carry phones with them, or those who create a disturbance when their phone emits sound, but why persecute the rest?
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