Exams for students with physical and learning difficulties

If you have a permanent or long-term condition, including visual and hearing difficulties, or a specific learning difficulty, which significantly impairs your performance in the examinations you or your school will have already applied to the SEC for a reasonable accommodation.

The reasonable accommodations are intended to:
(a) remove, as far as possible, the impact of the disability on the candidate’s performance and thus enable the candidate to demonstrate his or her level of attainment, and
(b) ensure that, whilst giving candidates every opportunity to demonstrate their level of attainment, the special arrangements will not give the candidate an unfair advantage over other candidates in the same examination.

Examples of reasonable accommodations include: access to a reader, modified papers, Braille translations or examination papers in large print. It can also include allowing you record your answers on a tape recorder, typewriter, and word processor or to dictate your answers to a scribe. If you have been granted a reasonable accommodation you will be aware of the exact nature of the accommodation which is to be provided.

In approving an exemption the SEC will inform you of the content of any explanatory note in relation to the subject concerned that may appear on the certificate. Any explanatory note will provide detail only on how the assessment procedure was altered. It will not record the nature of your disability. Similarly an explanatory note will be included on the certificate in any subject where the nature of the arrangement precludes the testing of a particular competency for which marks are allocated.

If you have any queries you can contact the state examinations commission’s ‘Reasonable Accommodation Section’ on 090-6442781 or [email protected]

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