Exams at School

The end of my time teaching coincided with the end of year exams. It meant we taught for the entirety of the third semester. The majority of the exams are district-wide, and therefore standard throughout the region. Due to this, Caitlin and I didn't have to worry about setting any exams, just whether our kids would pass!
Lessons ended on Wednesday, March 10, and exam prep began the next day. The students stayed at home to study, while the teachers came to school to prepare the exam booklets. It was a ton of folding. I folded for two hours without stopping, and the pile didn't look any smaller. It wasn't difficult though, and with a dozen teachers working together, the work did actually get done fairly quickly. We left around noon, and had the rest of the day off. Friday was much the same, except we brought in a cake to say thank-you to the teachers.
Caitlin and I went to Kathmandu that weekend, and returned to school on Tuesday. Out responsibilities during this time period were to be at school while out classes wrote their English exams, and then to mark said exams. With upwards of 60 students in some classes (and some really poor penmanship) it was a lot of marking. The exams were held in the morning, and we were free to mark at home in the afternoon. All in all not very stressful days.
In reality, the three days our kids had exams were rather boring. We invigilated Class 3, but otherwise hung out in the staff room all morning. Invigilating was fun, but very different from exams at home. The kids of kind of allowed to talk to each other, according to what everyone else is saying about their invigilating experiences. We didn't really let the Class 3's talk, but they were trying to help each other and copy the answers all the way through. Apparently this was even more the case in the older exams. When marking Class 7, I found some many instances where the kids made the exact same mistakes, and even had the exact same essays!
Once exams were over that was it for school. After 3 months we said goodbye and headed out the gate. A bit anti-climactic, but that's life.