Supporting Assessment Design at Key Stage 3
Diversity and context
The following summary from Fair Access by Design: Guidance for awarding organisations on designing high-quality and inclusive qualifications (Qualifications Wales and CCEA Regulation, 2019) illustrates how designing written assessments to recognise the full diversity of the learner population can enhance access:
- Ensure that the people represented in assessment materials reflect the diversity of society. Narrow cultural referencing should be avoided.
- Learners originating from outside the UK, or from some cultural backgrounds, may be unfamiliar with, or confused by, terms that seem relatively familiar within UK lifestyle and culture.
- Avoid colloquialisms unless they are part of a quotation or extract from a text being used as part of the assessment.
- Avoid narrow, negative or stereotypical representations of different groups.
- Adopt a balanced approach to roles, activities and appearances.
- Ensure that people of all cultures, disabilities and societies are presented accurately and with respect.
- Use contexts for questions that reflect the experience of all groups in a balanced way.
- The use of ‘real-world’ contexts often makes helpful connections for learners. However, the context should not dominate. If learners lose subject focus, they may rely on general knowledge rather than subject knowledge to answer the question.
- Some illustrations (visual or literary) can cause offence to particular groups. Images of clothing styles and references to food items, sports and animals require sensitivity.
- Weak readers, including some deaf readers, may find that names from other cultures may not be familiar to them or identifiable as names, particularly if the name comes first in the sentence. When using names, it is helpful to use examples from each culture that are more likely to be familiar.
- In politically sensitive areas it is important to ensure that there is a balanced representation of sports and musical traditions associated with different groups of people.
- Practices and behaviours accepted by some groups may offend others.
- References to literary or film characters may not be equally familiar to people of all ages or across different cultures. Even where a reference or character has become a cultural archetype, there is a risk of misunderstanding.
- Certain contexts can be emotionally disturbing to learners with related experiences such as serious illness, bereavement, violence, abuse, domestic fires and road accidents. Where the subject demands such references, the use of affective language should be limited.