What access arrangements are
Access arrangements are the adjustments a young person can have in GCSE, A level and other exams, so that a difficulty does not stop them showing what they know. Extra time is the one most people have heard of. Others include a reader or computer reader, a scribe, a word processor, rest breaks, or sitting the exam in a smaller room.
The rules for all of them are set by the Joint Council for Qualifications, which the exam boards follow, and they are reviewed every year.
Talk to the school first
If you read only one part of this page, make it this one. Under the exam boards’ rules, set by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), your child’s school or college has to agree to the assessor before the assessment happens. A report arranged privately, without the school’s involvement, can be turned down, and that is a miserable and expensive thing to discover halfway through Year 11.
So the first step is always a conversation with the school’s SENCo. Ask whether they will accept an assessment from an external assessor, and what they need from it. I am always happy to talk to the school myself, and I would much rather do that at the start than have your child sit an assessment the school cannot use.
What the assessment involves
An access arrangements assessment is shorter and more focused than a full diagnostic assessment. It looks at the particular skills exams depend on, such as reading speed, reading comprehension, writing speed, and the speed at which a young person takes in and processes information.
The school also needs evidence of how your child normally works in lessons, so the assessment is one part of a picture the school builds up, rather than the whole of it. Arrangements are meant to reflect the way a young person already works, so that the exam room is not the first time they meet them.
It is worth being clear about what it does not do. An access arrangements assessment does not diagnose dyslexia. If you want to know whether your child is dyslexic, that is a full diagnostic assessment, and it can provide the evidence for access arrangements as well.
How it feels for the young person
Teenagers often arrive expecting another test they might fail, usually in the subject they already find hardest. I explain what we are doing and why, I take breaks whenever they need them, and I make sure they understand that the whole point is to let the exam measure what they actually know. For a lot of young people, hearing that said plainly is a relief in itself.
As with everything I do, it happens in person, usually at my garden office in Trowbridge, within about half an hour of Bath, Bradford on Avon, Frome, Westbury, Warminster, Melksham, Devizes, Corsham and Chippenham. Plenty of people come much further, from the Midlands, London, the Home Counties and the South East, and from abroad.
Afterwards
I record the results on JCQ Form 8 (school has to send it to me with the first part completed), the form the exam boards require, and send it back to the school, which then applies for the arrangements. I am happy to talk both you and the school through what the scores mean and which arrangements the evidence supports.
Assessment Practising Certificate, 23/APC05078 · AMBDA, 20/AMB04046