Access arrangements and special consideration
Access arrangements can be applied for by your school or college to help you access assessments. If you have difficulties during an exam, your school or college can request special consideration. This page provides an overview for students and parents.
What are access arrangements?
Access arrangements are requested by your schools or colleges before you complete an assessment and allow them to make small changes to the way the assessment is delivered or completed.
These 'reasonable adjustments' allow students with special educational needs, disabilities or temporary injuries to show what they know and can do without changing the integrity or the demands of the assessment.
Some examples of access arrangements include supervised rest breaks, extra time and/or use of:
- a reader or computer reader
- 'read aloud' software or an exam reading pen
- a scribe or voice recognition technology
- a word processor
- a bilingual translation dictionary
What is special consideration?
Special consideration is a post-exam adjustment to your mark or grade to reflect personal circumstances that affected your performance during an assessment.
There are a wide range of reasons why special consideration may be requested and although it can't remove the difficulty you faced, it can go some way to taking emotional or physical difficulties into account.
There are times when emotional or physical difficulties mean that you shouldn't take an assessment. If you think this may be the case, you should discuss your concerns with your school or college.
Understanding marks and grades
- 9-1 awarding FAQs
- Calculating your overall BTEC grade: Information for students
- Using the BTEC grade calculator
- GCSE and A level marks and grades
- Converting marks, points and grades
- Onscreen, on-demand test results
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Understanding your results
- GCSE results explained
- A level results explained
- Edexcel Certificate results explained
- International GCSE results explained
- International Advanced Level results explained
- Functional Skills results explained
- Project results explained
- BTEC results explained
- Special requirements: Information for students and parents
- Edexcel International Primary and Lower Secondary Curriculum results explained
Results and certification
