Pronouns in maths exams

Well said @RumpBelle - I suspect that suggestions please "identifies as" someone who works with children with additional needs and actually has nothing to do with them. Let's hope so for their sakes.

SEN adviser apparently

‘Legitimate confusion’, Suggestionsplease?

Students who are confused by plural vs singular pronouns in maths are illegitimately confused, then,?

And perversely many of the children who are in the grip of using their self declared pronouns will also be amongst those who have difficulties with language complexity. So some well meaning (I'm being generous) gender ideologist who thought it a super idea to throw in this inclusive language to a maths exam, has potentially, caused them much confusion.

I feel like suggestions please is an abomination to the education sector.
Spouting ablest nonsense I haven't heard in education for at least twenty years.
At best, someone working with children spouting that crap about Sen would be sent on training. A senco or similar could reasonably be dismissed for such discrimatory views.
Your sacred caste are not the most marginalised ever, that's the Sen and children with disabilities you penalise and belittle
Honestly horrified you are anywhere near children.

In some sentences it’s really clunky. And I have a VERY woke friend who often ends up referring to my NB friend as ‘it’ because she can’t get her head around whether it should be ‘they are’ or ‘they is’. I just use my friends name because otherwise it sounds try hard/ like I subscribe to an ideology that I don’t subscribe to. They regularly refer to themselves as ‘she’ so it’s a lot of conversational stress for nothing!

I feel like suggestionsplease1 lives in a very middle class, white suburb, or possibly a university city. Maybe I’m wrong.

This so describes my DD.

I think some people on this thread are being willfully obtuse about the difficulties that some students experience. It's a maths exam, the questions should be written in the most straightforward language possible.

Lol yes @MagpiePi - let's not forget the real victims here (those fictional exam subjects who are probably struggling to "see themselves as a boy or a girl"). The real life students are just collateral damage. Would indeed be funny if it weren't actually true.

Is it just me or does anyone else sometimes feel like they are living in a 21st century version of the Truman Show?

yes - and even more so for students who are already used to feeling confused with maths questions, and know that they often misread or leave words out, and on reading 'they', could well subconsciously assume that they've missed part of the question about the other people involved.

People defending this use are assuming huge levels of natural language knowledge, reading skills, etc. If you are already getting a scrambled version of the question because of language comprehension, and then trying to figure out what maths to do on it, that is a challenge in itself. Don't make life worse for them, just for a few students who don't want the words he/she in an exam.

In my law degree where we are discussing the liability of various people, you pretty much always use the name to make it clear who you are speaking of. A he or they could refer to several different people and it may be obvious from the paragraph but best to be crystal clear.

I find it mildly confusing when 'they' is used to refer to a person that has previously been named. It disrupts your flow of thoughts, not to mention that little tick of irritation and accompanying eyeroll.

At least the exam boards can't be accused of misgendering an entirely fictional person. Because that would be literal violence, as far as I understand it, and obviously much, much worse than confusing students unnecessarily.

This will not relate to confusion over the correct calculations, which will be perfectly understandable from the syntax and grammar of the text.

That is exactly the problem that children with developmental language disabilities have! They find the syntax and grammar really difficult to process at the best of times. Add in missing out words and other complications, and of course there is potential for confusion - unnecessarily.

You can phrase the questions to avoid dividing things between boys and girls, sure. Use year groups instead, or split a group into those who came by car or by foot, or whatever. You can use names that might be more gender neutral (but still easy to read), and use them in problems worded to avoid he/she if you must - Alex and Sam split £40 in the ratio 5:3 - how much does each child get?

But adding in complexities like 'they', that require the context, syntax, word order etc to get right - that is just taking the hardest things for a child with DLD and making them harder, for no beneficial reason.

You really aren't understanding the degree of language difficulty that some of the students have - and it's quite subtle in how it manifests, so it's often not apparent to the student or to the teacher exactly what's gone wrong or why. Sometimes I have thought that my pupils were really confused about some aspect of the maths, but it's only on very careful questioning that I have worked out that actually they have misinterpreted some part of the language of the question (often alongside a maths difficulty, which makes it even harder to work out). The children don't have normal knowledge of grammar and syntax, and if they struggle with maths as well, they aren't going to immediately predict what the examiner means because they are familiar with the type of maths questions.

There are plenty of ways of avoiding gendered language if you feel that is a real issue in maths exams - but things like using 'they' can really make life harder for language-disordered students.

Oh and yes to ‘paper’s should be written clearly’

obviously!

the whole point is they aren’t

How embarrassing for them @suggestionsplease1.

Have to agree

look, its very simple….Dont do it in maths where the focus is the numbers bit

i had a quick look at pearsons website and they had a note saying that (in effect) if ‘they’ is used by a child in an answer to mark it as correct IF it is clear to THE EXAMINER that the child is referring to the correct person

The use of 'they' as a gender neutral pronoun is now commonplace, and as a maths teacher has already said on this thread, reflects the lived reality of chosen expression and pronoun identifier for many students nowadays.

Mainstream dictionaries, newspapers, reports all recognise this use, there is nothing unusual about this anymore.

I am sure some people have been thrown for a split second over the years by character names that they have never heard of appearing in maths questions. Some of them might even think 'For crying out loud, this isn't a geography exam, it's a maths paper, why don't they just use typical British names that the 'normal' person taking these exams in England can understand?'

So, wanting questions to be clear if a singular person is referred to using plural pronouns, is like being racist.

No @suggestionsplease1 - the correct way is to use plain English not some bastardisation of the language to suit a bunch of people who want to enforce their ideology on society.

This is EXACTLY why words and language matters, and being so ambiguous "for the sake of inclusivity" bollocks is problematic. Well, it's just one of a myriad of reasons why it's problematic.

The correct way forward is to re-educate your children out of wrongthink. To tell them that if they find plural pronouns to describe a single person confusing in the context of a maths exam, it's their fault and they really are as stupid as they think they are.

Gotcha 👍

If a student is capable of GCSE maths I am sure they are capable of comprehending how they/their might be used in this way

Not at all.

The exam is for MATHS not comprehension.

This will not relate to confusion over the correct calculations, which will be perfectly understandable from the syntax and grammar of the text.

I am sure some people have been thrown for a split second over the years by character names that they have never heard of appearing in maths questions. Some of them might even think 'For crying out loud, this isn't a geography exam, it's a maths paper, why don't they just use typical British names that the 'normal' person taking these exams in England can understand?'

I am sure, however, that assuming they have been entered for an appropriate qualification for them, that they can get past this to calculate an answer.

If they have additional needs that would make this harder in any way, the correct way forward is adequate preparation for the exam, not changing the language of the paper. These students are already likely to have extra time to facilitate processing and comprehension of questions.

On a general note, colleagues and I have noticed a rise in poorly-worded exam papers generally over the last few years. BTEC are terrible for it; very badly written. Functional Skills maths scenarios are getting more convoluted by the year.

There was a recent consultation on this issue but annoyingly I didn't respond (too busy at work and fighting for women's rights - bit pissed off with myself now). Exam papers are supposed to be moderated for plain and clear language. This is getting lost somewhere. Ideology is a part of this.

You know it's indoctrination when questions and phrasing need to be added to exams even when it disadvantages and confuses children and people still defend these questions and phrasing.