How to make an exam seating plan (with a worked example)
Updated 7 min read
A good exam seating plan (many schools call it a sitting plan or seat plan) does three things: it gives every candidate a seat, it puts students sitting different papers side by side so copying is hard, and it lets anyone find any student in seconds on the day. Here is a method that does all three, whether you plan on paper, in a spreadsheet or with software.
1. Count the candidates for each sitting
Work sitting by sitting: every paper that is written at the same date and time shares the same rooms. For each sitting, list the papers and how many students write each one.
Use the enrolment list, not the class strength you remember. Students who have left, transferred in or are exempt from a paper change the numbers, and a seating plan built on the wrong count fails on the first morning.
2. List your rooms and their real capacity
For each room, count the benches and decide how many students each bench takes during exams. A bench that seats three in class often seats two in an exam. Multiply benches by seats per bench for the room's exam capacity.
Add up the capacity of the rooms you can use. If it is less than the number of candidates in the sitting, stop here and find another room or split the sitting; do not squeeze extra students onto benches at the last minute.
- Leave a seat or two spare where you can, for a late change
- Note rooms that suit students who need extra time or space
- Write down the room order you will fill, usually nearest the office first
3. Decide how papers are mixed
The strongest protection against copying is a neighbour who is writing a different paper. When two or more papers sit at the same time, interleave them: the first seat on a bench goes to one paper, the next seat to another, and so on around the room.
When there is only one paper in the sitting, mix sections or seat one student per bench if you have the room. Interleaving only works while every paper still has students to seat: once the smaller group runs out, the remaining students all write the same paper, so plan where they go, ideally one to a bench.
4. Seat students in roll-number order
Within each paper, take students in roll-number order. It makes the plan predictable: a student knows roughly where to look, and an invigilator can check a list from top to bottom.
Fill rooms in the order you chose, bench by bench and seat by seat. Number benches the same way in every room, front to back, so 'Room 102, Bench 7, Seat 2' means the same thing to everyone.
| Bench | Seat 1 | Seat 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grade 9, Roll 1 | Grade 10, Roll 1 |
| 2 | Grade 10, Roll 2 | Grade 9, Roll 2 |
| 3 | Grade 9, Roll 3 | Grade 10, Roll 3 |
| 4 | Grade 10, Roll 4 | Grade 9, Roll 4 |
Room 101, interleaved: Grade 9 Science and Grade 10 Mathematics share the room, alternating on every bench, and each class is in roll order.
5. Worked example
Grade 9 (22 students) and Grade 10 (18 students) write different papers at 10:00. Rooms 101 and 102 each have 12 benches of 2 seats: 48 seats for 40 candidates, so there are spares. Interleave the two classes from Room 101 onwards and every bench gets one Grade 9 and one Grade 10 student.
After 18 benches, Grade 10 has run out and four Grade 9 students are left. Seated two to a bench they would sit beside someone writing the same paper, so use the spare benches and seat them one to a bench: the plan uses 22 of the 24 benches and nobody shares a bench with a classmate.
6. Print door charts and tell students
Print one sheet per room for the door: bench, seat, roll number, name, class and paper, with the room's invigilators. Keep a master list by roll number at the exam office for students who forget their room.
Put the room, bench and seat on each student's admit card, or publish them a day early, so students go straight to their seats instead of crowding the notice board.
7. On the day
Take hall attendance paper by paper: present, absent, expelled or exempted. Record absentees before the answer scripts leave the room, so marks entry later shows them as absent rather than as zero.
Keep the plan for the next sitting: the rooms and capacities rarely change, so most of the work is already done.
Doing it with software
The free exam seating plan generator on this site follows exactly this method in your browser: add rooms and classes, choose interleaved or sequential seating, and print door charts. In SchoolEasy, the same plan is generated from your school's own exams, rooms and enrolled students; invigilators see their duties, and each student's seat appears on their admit card and in their exam routine.