well actually I am one of the people who was offered this during my exams because of my handwriting. they actually tried to get me a laptop but it was to neat... anyway I took it up for chem, physics and art I declined it for music (to much trouble playing 2 different tapes) and for some reason I wasn't offered it for English or maths (duuu). that said, I found that by the end of the normal time allotted I had finished the exam and then I did spend the extra minutes (5 per hour if I remember correctly) correcting the points were my writing (which is s***) became scribble that not even I could read. but the fact that I had finished the exam by the allotted time shows that the tests are uncannily accurate. the claims that elite students were using the extra time really only counts towards exams were you have the longer essay questions, basically English and perhaps history and art. I actually declined the extra time in music because I thought it would give me an advantage that I didn’t need (I got 83% which is average for me) but with the sciences, well the extra 15 minute you get doesn’t really help. and you also have to have a history of bad writing in the claim (unless its physical) and give examples, so if someone deliberately made their writing illegible for years before the HSC just to get the extra time, well they would end up losing marks as they have wasted time for all there assessments.
and finally, I don’t know about you but I can type faster than I can write but the downside is that, although the quality of my writing is 10x better, it also takes me 10x longer as I have a tendency to... well basically bullshit more. that’s the reason why I almost always was in the 90% range in my art assessments which were handed in and were, if I say so myself, quite good, if abit over punctuated. were as in adv English which was written, well I was barely passing, not because I didn’t know what I was writing about but because, when I write I generally say nothing... now were was I. oh yes, if your an elite student then 15 minutes extra could help but frankly you actually have to have a problem to get that extra time and, annoyingly, that problem generally takes 5 minutes per hour to fix.
Annoyingly uncanny isn’t it