Exam seating plans

Generate one seat per student for an exam session, spread classes to discourage copying, and override individual seats by hand.

Examinations guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

Seating starts from the papers in the session. The generator collects every class that has a non-cancelled paper, pulls the active roster for each of those classes, then fills the rooms you describe in order, row by row and column by column. Seat labels are positional, in the form R2C5, so an invigilator can find a candidate from the chart without a separate numbering scheme.

Two placement modes change the order students are laid out in. Shuffle randomises the whole list. Interleaving by class merges the class lists round-robin, so neighbouring desks tend to hold students from different classes - the more useful setting when several sections sit the same session. The two are mutually exclusive; choosing interleave turns shuffle off.

Prerequisites

The session exists with at least one paper, otherwise generation fails with no classes found
The papers point at classes that have active students for the session academic year
You know each room name, its capacity, and its row and column layout
Exam management rights: Platform Admin, Principal, Vice Principal, Admin, or an exam coordinator

Actions available

Action	Effect
Preview	Returns a proposed plan and a per-room breakdown without writing anything
Save	Deletes existing seats for the session and writes the new plan
Move one student	Updates that seat and flags it as a manual override
Clear	Removes every seat row for the session

Handoff

Seating feeds exam day. Invigilators work from the roster and seating chart for the paper in front of them, marking absentees and logging irregularities against the candidates listed there. Hall tickets carry the same allocation out to families. Because the plan is stored per session, a student added to a class after seating was saved has no desk until you regenerate or place them by hand, and that gap shows up on the morning of the paper rather than before it.

Limits

Rooms are described inline for the run, not drawn from the exam venue records, so the layout has to be re-entered for each generation
There is no per-paper seating variation and no automatic re-seat when a student is added to a class mid-session
Invigilator assignment is separate from seating and is done per paper

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Is seating per paper or per session?+

Per session. A student holds one seat for the whole exam session, keyed on session and student, so the same desk is used across every paper in that session rather than being redrawn per subject.

Some students were left without a seat. Why?+

Total seats fell short. Effective room capacity is the smaller of the stated capacity and rows multiplied by columns, so a room described as 40 seats but 5 by 6 only holds 30. The result reports an unassigned count - add rooms or correct the layout and regenerate.

Does regenerating seating keep manual changes?+

No. Saving a new plan deletes every existing seat row for the session first, including manual overrides. Redo the overrides after each regeneration, or make them the last step.

Are extra-time and separate-room accommodations applied automatically?+

No. Accommodations such as separate room, scribe, or extra time live on the student profile and are surfaced on exam-day screens, but seat generation ignores them. Move those students by hand after generating.