Teach-Secondary-14.1

GCSE (9–1) Maths – the importance of accessibility by OCR Maths Subject Advisors In GCSE (9–1) Maths assessments, it’s essential all students have every chance to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. To achieve this, at OCR we ensure our questions are clear and easy for students to understand. In other words, that they are accessible. An accessible assessment: • is easy to understand, so students know what they are being asked to do, • assesses only what it is intended to assess, • is fair, as far as is reasonably possible, to all students. We make continual improvements to our question papers and supporting materials to improve their accessibility. We constantly review new research, listen to your feedback and carry out our own research, to help make sure that no student is disadvantaged by not being able to access questions in our assessments. We’ve developed a set of accessibility principles that inform how we write our question papers. They’ve been written in collaboration with relevant organisations such as BATOD (British Association of Teachers of the Deaf ) and Colour Blind Awareness. You can read more about them in our GCSE (9–1) Maths ‘Exploring our question papers’ guide available from ocr.org.uk/gcsemaths , but several examples are below. You can view our past papers at ocr.org.uk/gcsemaths , or to see the most recent papers speak to your exams officer about setting up a Teach Cambridge account. To discover more about our GCSE (9–1) Maths qualification, go t o teach.ocr.org.uk/gcse-maths-for-all Sentence prompts are included within answer lines, to help students understand what is required and to structure their answer. Sentences are short and direct, using clear and familiar words. This reduces cognitive load, so students can focus on the topic being assessed. We read from left to right, so text is left aligned to help students spot and read given information. Each instruction is on a new line. This allows the reader to clearly see what the question is asking. Key words and phrases are highlighted in bold. Arial font is easy to read, making it quick to process. Image: J560/05 summer 2023