Exam accommodations at school and university: what actually works

“I need more time in exams, but my request was turned down” – you read sentences like that in ADHD forums all the time. Yet schools and universities have a procedure made exactly for this: reasonable accommodations. They don’t make an exam easier, they remove the disadvantage the exam format itself creates. Here is what that means, what you can ask for, and what a request looks like that actually gets approved.

What an accommodation is – and isn’t

An accommodation changes the conditions of an exam, not its content. You write the same exam on the same material and you’re marked by the same standards – only with, say, more time or in a quieter room. That’s also why it doesn’t appear on your certificate: no note, no footnote, no disadvantage later.

What it is not: a grade boost, a free pass for missed deadlines, or a substitute for treatment and structure. And it almost never works retroactively. An exam that went wrong last week can’t be healed this way – the next attempt can.

What you can ask for

The list is longer than most people think. Common accommodations for ADHD:

• Extra time – often 25 percent, more for longer pieces of work.
• A quieter room or a separate room, sometimes with ear protection.
• Breaks that don’t count against your working time.
• A different exam format, oral instead of written or the other way round – the strongest measure, and the one that needs the best reasoning.
• Deadline extensions for essays and theses, usually counted in weeks.
• Tools: a laptop without a network, spell checking, a visible timer on the desk.
• Materials in advance – slides, scripts, recordings, when listening and writing at the same time doesn’t work.

At school the head teacher usually decides, sometimes together with the education authority; at university it is the exam board, advised by the officer for students with disabilities and chronic illness. Student services will help you word the request – free of charge and often surprisingly fast.

What a request that gets approved looks like

Rejected requests rarely fail on the subject. They fail on three things: too late, too general, no evidence. A solid request has four parts:

1. Diagnosis and evidence: a current medical certificate or the diagnostic report. What matters is not the diagnostic code but what follows from it for exams – ideally the practice writes exactly that.
2. The concrete effect: not “I have ADHD”, but “noise makes me lose the thread and after every interruption I need several minutes to get back into the task”.
3. The measure, named precisely: “25 percent extra time and a room with no more than five people” – not “some consideration”.
4. The context: which exam, which term, which deadline. And file early: many places require several weeks’ notice.

If it’s refused, ask for the reasoning – in writing. Often a single sentence is missing from the certificate, or the measure was worded badly. A second request with the same diagnosis and better reasoning has good chances.

And at work?

It has a different name there but works similarly: with a recognised disability status you can ask for adjustments to your workplace; without it, it’s a conversation with your manager. In practice, small and concrete asks land best – a room without through traffic, meetings in the morning, written tasks instead of instructions shouted down the corridor.

What this has to do with DayBlock

No request replaces a day that holds. For the deadlines such a procedure brings along – send the request, get the certificate, follow up after two weeks – you can add deadlines with a date in DayBlock; they sit at the top of your list until they’re done.

As of October 2026. This is a general overview and not legal advice – rules differ by country, school and university. What counts is always the exam regulations and the responsible office.