Dear Nona
I am not sure if you are referring to a particular religion here but I assume you are talking about religions that have prescriptive prayer times? If so then I think we are probably talking about Islamic prayers and am not sure why students would need to pray during an actual exam. There are 5 prayer times during the day each of which have a particular time span that you can offer prayers in. If muslims cannot offer prayers at the prescribed times they have the option to offer a late apology prayer, so really I don’t think there would be a need for students to pray during an exam.
What might be an idea is to ensure when exams are scheduled to check prayer times so that there is an awareness that it may clash with a prayer time. If exams are just held in the day time the only prayer that could clash would be the midday one which is around 1.00ish (depends on the time of year) or the one after this which would currently be around 6ish so wouldn’t really clash.
Bradford Uni have done some work on this and my colleague kindly found me a link to their policy.
http://www.bradford.ac.uk/exams/PrayerBreaksDuringAssessmentandLearningActivities/
I hope this is useful.
Kind Regards
Ammara Khan
Equalities Manager
Institute of Education, University of London
20 Bedford Way
London WC1H OAL
Telephone: 020 7612 6321
From: HE Administrators equal opportunities list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of McDuff, Nona P
Sent: 01 May 2012 15:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Prayer during exams
Dear all
I am interested in the approach institutions have taken to prayer during exams. Do people allow students to get up and go to the back of the exam room to pray?
I know a call was made last year for advice on arrangements but they seemed to be more to do with fasting than prayer?
Thanks all
Nona
Nona McDuff MSc Cert Education
Head of Equality I Equality Unit
Kingston University London I 53 Portland Road I Kingston upon Thames I Surrey I KT1 2SH
T 020 8417 4494 I Internal 64494 I [log in to unmask] I www.kingston.ac.uk
Information in this email and any attachments are confidential, and may not be copied or used by anyone other than the addressee, nor disclosed to any third party without our permission. There is no intention to create any legally binding contract or other commitment through the use of this email.
Please consider the environment before printing this email.
This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email
Security System.