How do you get 25% extra time in GCSEs and A-levels?

What extra time is - and what it is for

The standard arrangement adds 25% to the length of each paper: a 90-minute exam becomes just over 112 minutes. It exists to level the field, not tilt it - for a student whose processing speed, reading or writing genuinely runs slower than the exam assumes, extra time removes a disadvantage the paper was never meant to measure. That framing matters, because it is exactly how the decision gets made: the question is never "would more time help?" (it would help everyone) but "does this student need it to have a fair shot?".

Who decides - and why parents cannot apply to the board

This is the misunderstanding at the heart of most extra-time frustration: there is no form a parent sends to AQA or Edexcel, and a private report commissioned from outside the school cannot by itself secure the arrangement. Under the JCQ rules the boards share, the decision sits with the school - its SENCo (special educational needs coordinator) and an appropriately qualified assessor - who must hold the evidence of need and the classroom history to back it.

What parents can do is start and support the process: raise concerns with the SENCo, share any diagnoses or reports you have (they are useful context, even though they don't decide the outcome), and ask what evidence school is gathering. The school then assesses, documents, and puts the arrangement in place under the JCQ framework. If you feel the school isn't engaging, ask for a meeting with the SENCo directly and ask specifically what the assessment showed - the process should be explainable to you at every step.

"Normal way of working" - the phrase that decides everything

The JCQ rules keep returning to one idea: an exam arrangement must reflect how the student normally works. A student who genuinely needs extra time will have been using it - in class assessments, in mocks, in everyday timed work - long before the real exams. That history is the evidence. An arrangement that would appear for the first time in the exam hall, with no classroom trail behind it, is precisely what the rules are designed to refuse.

This is why timing matters so much. The need has to be identified, assessed and then woven into everyday school life so that by exam season it is simply how that student works. Left to the last minute, even a genuine need can be impossible to evidence properly.

The route, step by step

In practice the path looks like this: raise the concern with the SENCo as early as you can - ideally in Year 9 or 10 for GCSEs, at the start of the course for A-levels. The school gathers evidence: teacher observations, classwork under time pressure, and where the rules require it a formal assessment by a qualified assessor. If need is established, the arrangement goes into daily use, then the school records the approval before exam season under the JCQ process. The thresholds and paperwork behind that assessment are detailed and updated each year - your SENCo works with the current rules, so let them own the specifics.

And if the answer is no: ask why, and what the assessment found. Sometimes the honest reading is that the evidence points to a different arrangement - rest breaks, a laptop, a separate room - that fits the actual need better than extra time would.