How a diagnostic exam works

Where

At home, at your kitchen table

When

No fixed dates. Whenever suits you

How long

3 uninterrupted hours

Your child needs

A calculator, a quiet room and a phone

Available

Within 24 hours of payment

Results

Marks in 1 hour, the report in 24

The five steps

Exam Diagnostics ZA is a South African service that marks a full Grade 10–12 mock exam paper mark by mark and reports every lost mark, with a strategy report and a video walkthrough, within 24 hours. In practice that is five steps, and only one of them takes your child any time: the three hours spent writing the paper.

1. Pick a deal Mark Recovery: the whole subject.
2. Scan the code, write timed The exam app clocks every question.
3. Send it in Marks in 1 hour. The full report in 24.
4. Fuelled by the insights A follow-up exam built from his report. Included.
5. Where it leads One diagnostic at a time.

Step one: choose the papers

You pick the grade, the subject and whether it is Paper 1 or Paper 2, then choose CAPS or IEB once for the order. You can add papers for more than one child in the same order, and the price per paper drops as the order grows.

If you are not sure which curriculum your child is on, it is on their school report, or the school office will tell you. If you are not sure which paper, a returned test usually shows which half of the subject is losing marks — the subject pages set out what each paper covers.

Step two: write it, on the clock

Within 24 hours of payment the exam environment and the paper are ready. Your child scans a code, and the timer starts on the first tap. It does not pause. Three uninterrupted hours, closed book, no help — the same conditions as the real paper.

• Set the room up first. A table, a calculator, paper to write on, and a phone for the code and the photographs.
• Start when you are both ready. The clock runs once, so there is no starting over.
• Your child writes on paper , exactly as they would in the hall.
• No notes, no textbook, no help. A paper written with notes produces a report about a pupil who does not exist.

Step three: send it in

At the end your child photographs each page with the same phone and uploads them. There is a short window to change the order of the pages or replace a photograph, and then the paper goes off and the link closes.

Marks come back within 1 hour. The full report follows within 24, by email and to your WhatsApp number. A printed copy can be couriered for R250, once per order, arriving in 3–5 working days.

Step four: read the report

The report runs to eight pages and answers one question: which of these marks were already within reach? It gives the mark, the mark in reach, every lost mark with its reason, the recoverable marks question by question, and the concepts behind them.

• Cover
• The mark, and the mark in reach
• Why the marks were lost
• 26% recoverable
• Recoverable marks by question
• Recoverable marks, continued
• Concepts behind the losses
• Concepts, continued

A video walkthrough comes with it, so you are not left interpreting a report alone. You can read a complete one first: the sample report is the real thing, all eight pages.

Step five: write a second paper

A report is a measurement, and one measurement is a point rather than a direction. A follow-up paper, built from what the first report found, is included in Mark Recovery (R250 on its own) and shows whether the marks that were in reach have actually come back.

That is the whole method: measure, change one thing, measure again. One diagnostic at a time.

Questions about the process

Start with one paperFrom R299. Report in 24 hours.