Exam boards have been given new guidance to make their papers more accessible. Tests should use clearer language, a clear and consistent layout, and “source material, context, images and colour in ways that do not disadvantage students”, regulator Ofqual said. While an English exam “might test use of complex sentence structures, or analogy, inference and allusion”, it said “conversely, maths papers testing numeracy should not contain overly complex text”.
A consultation on accessibility in exams opened last November, with Ofqual saying previously some pupils may be “unfairly disadvantaged by irrelevant features” that could stop them showing their full potential in a subject. Some questions have also been criticised for having a middle-class bias, with modern languages or maths exams testing pupils’ knowledge of the theatre or skiing holidays.
In a 2017 Edexcel GCSE maths paper, candidates were asked about a theatre where “each person had a seat in the circle or had a seat in the stalls”. The question asks pupils to calculate how many of the 2,600 theatre seats were occupied but pupils would have needed to understand that the circle and stalls are different areas of the theatre to answer correctly.
