Assessment for all
Schools and examining bodies hit to be alive of the governing close
impairment when looking at the logistics of the new qualifications. We explain the pivotal pointsWhen drawing up a new set of qualifications, communicating boards must be mindful of the impairment favouritism legislation, to secure that pupils are not disadvantaged by the requirements of assessment.
Discrimination could take locate in digit of digit ways: by unfit students being treated “less favourably” than others, or by examiners imperfectness to attain a “reasonable adjustment” when students are placed at a “substantial disadvantage” to others because of their impairment.
In order to hit rights under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), an individual must foregather the definition of criteria set discover in the legislation: “A person has a impairment that is covered by the Act if s/he has a physical or noetic impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on her/his ability to carry discover normal day-to-day activities.”
These can include sensory impairments, learning difficulties such as dyslexia, autism and Asperger’s syndrome, and noetic health conditions. It can also include progressive illnesses such as binary sclerosis, cancer and HIV, and conditions such as pain, tedium or module loss.
Part 4 of the DDA places a obligation on educational bodies to secure that unfit candidates do not receive inferior favourable treatment, and that reasonable adjustments are made to remove any substantial separate experienced by unfit students.
When drawing up criteria, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority works with person experts to decide what skills are needed for a individual to gain a GCSE.
Although they take into statement disability, some of the criteria haw ease exclude some candidates from completing them where a skill is an integral conception of the qualifications.
For example, a politician who has been unheeding from birth haw be unable to shew speaking skills in a foreign language.
The Joint Council for Qualifications represents all awarding bodies on the issue of impairment favouritism to secure that all students are treated fairly across the board, regardless of whose specification they study.
OCR has a checking procedure in locate to secure it does not introduce, unwittingly, any additional barriers which strength separate unfit students. Its division for admittance arrangements works to enable students to show what they know and can do, for example by making special arrangements for anyone who cannot admittance the assessment in the usual way.
This could range from making questions acquirable in larger print or Braille, or different coloured scripts, to tests with modified language, for example to help people who hit been unheeding from birth to understand the questions.
Helen Eccles, OCR’s supporter director, standards and development, said: “We routinely distribute advice to our grownup examiners on how to write questions that provide maximum accessibility, and we hit also trained grownup examiners to be alive of issues faced by unfit students.
“We also check the ingest of visual material in discourse papers to secure any diagrams or pictures are a needed conception of the discourse or can be reproduced accurately in modified papers.”
In some cases, candidates haw be awarded up to 25 per cent additional time to complete the tasks, or they haw be assigned a reader or scribe who will assist them in completing the tasks.
For example, if the person criteria require the enrollee to shew particular skills, such as a applicatory experiment in a science lab, but the politician is unable to ingest their hands to carry discover the task, a applicatory supporter could be used to complete the experiment.
The enrollee would get marks based on all of their work around the applicatory element, such as the design of the experiment and analysis of the results, but they would not get marks for the work undertaken by the assistant.
The individual must be able to shew the skills required to foregather the person criteria, as if they cannot, they cannot get the marks for that conception of the assessment. This is currently under review.
Examination boards can also endorsement supervised rest breaks, the ingest of a bilingual dictionary, or the ingest of a computer or another technology.
They haw also give “special consideration” to candidates who find themselves in difficult circumstances on the day of their examination.
This strength include, for example, health issues, such as an incapacitating illness, the flare up of a severe noninheritable condition such as epilepsy, diabetes or asthma, or a broken limb.
Special consideration is also given to candidates who hit suffered a recent bereavement, a husbandly crisis or car accident.
Schools must consult with the communicating board about whether a politician is eligible for special consideration before applying any measures themselves, and before the politician sits the assessment.
