Access arrangements – More than a matter of compliance
Asmaa Ahmed explains why reasonable adjustments for GCSE exams depend on more than compliance alone…
- by Asmaa Ahmed
- Senior customer success manager at The Access Group Visit website
Most colleagues who have been anywhere near access arrangements will know the feeling want to do the right thing. They know what the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) and Equality Act demand. They care deeply about fairness.
Yet come May and June, those ideals around ensuring equitable access for all collide with the very real limits of space, staffing and time.
Access arrangements: intent versus reality
Every school leader I speak with says that they’re determined to avoid putting disabled students at a disadvantage in exams.
The trouble is, this stated commitment doesn’t automatically translate into enough rooms, trained adults or hours in the day.
A mid-sized cohort might include dozens of students requiring readers, scribes, supervised rest breaks or separate spaces.
Multiply that by overlapping timetables, and you’ll swiftly start to understand why exams officers age faster than the rest of us.
The issue isn’t just one of capacity; it’s timing. Some schools begin identifying students for access arrangements early, collecting evidence from Y9 onwards so that students have time to practise adjustments until they feel routine. Others don’t start soon enough.
When identification occurs too late, students end up being handed access arrangements they’ve barely rehearsed. It’s like giving a violinist new notation on the morning of a concert.
Consistency matters just as much as timeliness. Anyone who’s ever watched a nervous student enter a mock exam knows how fragile their confidence can be.
When mocks don’t mirror the real thing, students are left with no chance to test the environment, or work out what to do when anxiety hits.
A mismatch between mock and final access arrangements can undermine all the preparation in the world.
What do ‘good adjustments’ look like?
When access arrangements work well, students feel the benefit long before they ever set foot in the exam hall. Their adjustments end up forming part of their ‘normal way of working.’
Extra time doesn’t come as a surprise. Rest breaks don’t feel awkward. The laptop they use in the exam hall is the same one they’ve used in English for months.
The best schools will go beyond the rulebook and think about sensory load, predictability and emotional safety. Many students with autism, anxiety or trauma histories cope best in calm, low-stimulus environments.
They need clarity around the room they’ll be in, who will support them and what happens if they feel overwhelmed.
A familiar adult can make all the difference between a student spiralling and one who recovers enough to continue.
The logistical mountain
Some schools offer walkthroughs or visual guides, so that students can picture the experience before it happens.
I’ve previously had a SENCo tell me that she invites anxious students to practise opening the exam paper, filling in the front cover and even hearing the invigilator’s script ahead of time.
“If we can shrink the unknowns,” she said, “we shrink the fear.”
Behind the scenes, exam access arrangements tend to be something of an operational jigsaw involving SEND, pastoral teams, safeguarding personnel, subject teams and SLT members.
When things go wrong, it’s rarely because someone doesn’t care. More often, it’ll be because the system relies on a chain of humans working under pressure.
Schools are constantly wrestling with staff shortages and competing timetables. Clashes pile up. Appropriate rooms vanish just as quickly as they’re booked.
While invigilators are expected to uphold exam integrity, many receive little training on specific SEND profiles. That lack of preparation can lead to inconsistent experiences and, in a few cases, distress for those students who already associate tests with feelings of panic.
Communication breakdowns are common, too. Who collects which student? Which adult knows the student’s anxiety triggers?
Who checks that the reader is assigned to the correct candidate, and not the identical twin sat in the next room? When there are dozens of moving parts, the margin for error increases.
Exams are OUR job
Meanwhile, the JCQ tweaks something every year – and even small changes can upend workflows schools have spent months refining.
The most successful exam seasons have one factor in common, that being shared responsibility. When SEND and exam officers are left to carry everything, the strain soon starts to show. But when schools bring multiple teams together early, the culture shifts.
Pre-season planning meetings will help everyone understand what the cohort needs. Centralising staff deployment should help prevent sudden scrambles for warm bodies.
Some schools run consistent training for their invigilators and support staff so that expectations are made clear. Post-mocks debriefs serve to highlight where things went wrong and what still needs adjusting.
One of the most effective approaches I’ve seen is assigning key adults to the most vulnerable students. Those adults aren’t there to ‘bend the rules’, but to provide emotional safety and intercept problems before they escalate.
Listen to students, change the game
If the process of planning exams feels out of control for us adults, just imagine how they must seem to students with anxiety, or traits associated with pathological demand avoidance.
A ceding of control for these students, even in small ways, can make a real difference. Some schools help students devise simple, one-page ‘What helps me in exams’ profiles that outline what triggers their stress, what helps them recover and anything else other adults need to know.
Staff then have clear guidance without having to resort to guesswork. However supportive the adults are though, levels of fairness depend on consistency.
Students shouldn’t have drastically different exam experiences just because one invigilator is confident with SEND and another isn’t.
And as many teachers know, students can sometimes mask their distress so well that their needs are missed entirely.
Regular monitoring, check-ins and maintenance of communication channels with families will help to catch those students who might otherwise slip through the cracks unnoticed.
Emotional and academic readiness
The support available doesn’t have to stop at logistics. SEND students will often need scaffolded approaches to revision and retrieval practice, and usually benefit from predictable routines and structured tasks.
When schools model what good preparation looks like and break down expectations, students can arrive for their exams with not just with the right access arrangements, but a sense of readiness.
Digital platforms, such as Access GCSEPod, can support this kind of retrieval and confidence-building, but only when woven into a broader strategy, rather than handed to students as a standalone fix.
They work best when teachers use them to reinforce routines that students already know, rather than when adding yet another unknown to an already stressful landscape.
A fair exam experience is possible, but only if we treat that as a collective promise. One message expressed repeatedly by SEND leads is that fairness requires forethought.
When the need for access arrangements is identified early; when training is regular; when communications are kept clear; and when mock exams are used to stress-test systems – students feel the difference.
Access arrangements aren’t about loopholes or box-ticking; they’re about dignity. It’s about making sure that every student, regardless of need, can walk into their GCSE exams believing that the system hasn’t already decided their chances.
And, perhaps most importantly – it’s about remembering that for some young people, the quietest room in the school is the one that holds the most fear. Our job is to make that room feel a little less hostile
Asmaa Ahmed is a former teacher and mental health lead, now senior customer success manager at The Access Group, working with schools across the UK on the adoption and implementation of evidence-based strategies that improve student outcomes while reducing operational strain for staff.
