Student exam accommodations

Record extra time, a scribe, a separate room, or other access arrangements against a student, and understand exactly where they surface on exam day.

Students & families guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

An accommodation is a dated, approved instruction attached to one student: what arrangement applies, from when, until when if it expires, and any note the invigilator needs. Schoolyi stores it, tells the family, prints it on the hall ticket, and shows it on the exam-day roster. It does not act on it. Every physical arrangement — the quiet room, the scribe, the longer clock — is still made by people, so the record has to be complete enough for those people to act from.

Prerequisites and ownership

The student needs an active roster record; nothing else has to exist first, so arrangements can be recorded well before the exam session is built. Reading the list is open to staff, but adding, editing, and deleting require exam coordination rights: Platform Admin, Principal, and Vice Principal always qualify, and where strict exam governance is switched on, examination committee coordinators do too. Staff without those rights see the history with a read-only banner. Students and linked parents can retrieve their own records through the API, but the management screen itself is staff-side.

Recording an arrangement

Open the student profile and go to Accommodations at /students/[id]/accommodations.
Choose the type. Selecting extra time reveals a minutes field, capped at 360.
Set Effective from — it is required. Leave Effective to empty for an ongoing arrangement, or set an end date; it cannot be earlier than the start.
Write the details the invigilator and seating planner actually need, such as which room, which scribe, or the medical constraint behind it.
Save. The approver and the approval date are stamped from your account automatically, and the change is written to the exam audit log.

Where it shows up

Surface	What appears	Condition
Hall ticket PDF	A special accommodations block listing each type with its note and extra minutes.	The accommodation is active and its date range overlaps the exam session. Families can only download the hall ticket after the schedule is published.
Exam-day roster	Per-student flags for the invigilator alongside present, absent, and exempt status.	Active and overlapping the individual paper window, not just the session.
Student and parent notification	An in-app alert, and an email when that event is enabled, linking to My Exams.	Sent on creation only.
Seating designer	Nothing.	Seating does not read accommodations; a separate room has to be assigned deliberately.

What goes wrong

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Accommodation missing from the hall ticket	Date range does not overlap the session, or the record is inactive	Compare Effective from and Effective to against the session dates; an arrangement that ended last term will not print.
Old records seem to have vanished	Inactive rows are hidden by default	Turn on Show inactive to see expired and revoked arrangements.
Invigilator saw nothing on the roster	The accommodation was added after the paper, or does not overlap that paper	Roster flags are computed live per paper, so add arrangements before the exam day rather than after.
Family was never told an arrangement was withdrawn	Only creation notifies	Edits and deletions are silent. Contact the family separately.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Which accommodation types can be recorded?+

Ten fixed types: extra time, scribe, separate room, large print, scheduled breaks, computer, reader, calculator, oral response, and other. Extra time additionally takes a number of minutes, up to 360. Anything outside the list goes under other with the specifics written in the notes field.

Does recording extra time automatically extend the exam or change the seating plan?+

No. An accommodation is a documented instruction, not an automatic adjustment. It prints on the hall ticket and flags on the exam-day roster so invigilators act on it, but the seating designer does not read accommodations and no clock is extended for you. Allocate the separate room or the extra time by hand.

Who is told when an accommodation is approved?+

Creating one notifies the student and every linked parent in the app, and by email when the accommodation decision event has email enabled under exam notification settings. Editing or removing an accommodation later sends nothing, so tell the family yourself if you withdraw one.

Why can a coordinator see the accommodations page but not add anything?+

The page shows a read-only notice when the account lacks exam coordination rights. Reading is open to any staff account; adding, editing, and deleting need leadership or, where strict exam governance is enabled, membership of the examination committee.