Pronouns in maths exams

[OhWhatFuckeryIsThisNow]

I scribe for GCSEs. Today was aqa maths, calculator paper. Now maths textbooks and exams have long done diverse names in the examples, eg, Sarah and Rashid are making cakes...Dafydd is planting a garden, Safira is buying rope. You get the drift. This year though I’ve noticed that gender neutral has been introduced. So Kai is making a cake, they use 50 grams of sugar. One could say that making the questions genderless is ok, and maybe so if it was consistent. So there was they their, he him and she her. A few of my fellow sribers said that their candidates were confused by the wording of the questions (especially the they/theirs, the kids thought there were more than one person being talked about). I was talking about it with the maths teachers later and all of them said why can’t it be Student A, student B? And especially why cant the exam board be consistent?

Very unfair on students who don’t have English as their first language. This is an additional barrier to their understanding of the mathematical problem.

Incredibly problematic as it could be read as plural -=> impacting on the interpretation and calculation of the problem. Please please can you complain/raise it as a serious issue? I say this as a parent of a DC with a processing delay who has a hard enough time with word problems as it is.

How absolutely fucking stupid. Why would you want to confuse children who are taking one of the exams they absolutely have to pass too.

Can you complain OP?

That is strange and clearly unhelpful as just introduces uncertainty and lack of clarity. Maybe you should raise with the headteacher and ask how to go about raising this with the ex board(s)?

It’s also unfair to students with speech and language disorders - known as DLD.
My DS has this. In receptive it means language is more difficult to understand. He can struggle to figure out what written questions mean. His IQ is excellent.
I wonder if this would be disability discrimination and against the equality act?

. When I was doing my GCSEs in the dark ages they were just bringing in diverse names, but they used “he” for an Indian woman’s name. (definitely not a name used for boys and girls and no- one was thinking trans at all.) It felt sloppy. Luckily in a practice paper. I’m sure with nerves I could have spent time looking for a boy in the question in the real exam.

I thought they’d have cracked it by now but seems not.

Surely that adds in an extra layer of complication that leads to misconceptions.
I know the ks2 says use language like pair, naming two children but using a pronoun for the first which mislead the children to the wrong conclusion, eg. They half instead of split by thirds, find singular instead of double.

I think it's a bit much as it is when it's accurate, and would prefer reasoning questions to be written transparently, with neurodiversity in mind. I assume this is why they added the character introductions page for the old days.

But using they as a singular is beyond the pale. It's not checking their mathematical skills or even their comprehension skills. It's giving an advantage to those versed in gender woo at the expense of those with Sen, or English as an additional language.
If you know the process, I'd complain op. Children don't need obstacles put in their way. Exams are hard and stressful enough.

Ridiculous. In an exam, the names should be:

Bob
Sam
Ann

and the like. A single syllable that a reception child could read. It’s a maths exam and there shouldn’t be anything linguistically confusing.

OP I think you should complain to the exam board. Indeed perhaps to the EHRC as it is a disadvantage to those with English as an additional language. When you read of children taking Maths at a young age it is often boys or girls with south Asian heritage.

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.

Students at this age are very familiar with pronouns being used to reflect an individual's preference, and the grammar of the sentence will be sufficient to establish singular or plural with no impact to calculations.

Consistency is a weird thing to bring up; it's not like the entire population only consistently use 'they, their' for themselves so why should a maths paper pretend they do?

‘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.’

No. I taught students with very basic English skills and excellent Maths skills. Just as I could have excellent Maths skills and speak very little Mandarin. It’s not a language exam. The language should be as easy as possible so the focus is on the skill being tested.

It’s a maths exam and there shouldn’t be anything linguistically confusing.
Absolutely.

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.
I don't think this is the case. Some children are excellent at maths and not at reading comprehension.

I'm not going to dignify the stupidity of this post with anything more than that you're wrong.

And to use a term beloved of those who subscribe to gender woo - educate yourself.

As others have pointed out - it makes life more difficult for second language speakers, many children with special needs / learning difficulties and any child not part of the "inconsistent grammatically incorrect use of pronouns" group.
And (still hanging on by a thread) all children are meant to matter in schools and nothing should be done that actively discriminates against certain groups in order to pander to the relentless demands of followers of a niche ideology.

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

Well no, they're not. That's the point people are making. Did you bother to read the other posts? A maths exam should test maths, not literacy. And it should do so in a manner which does not discriminate against those with linguistic difficulties, either due to them being neuro atypical or having ESL.

It highlights the absurdity of they/them when referring to a singular person. Kids have gone through their entire education learning they/them/their is used in the plural sense and some bright spark drops it in to a gcse maths exam. It's ridiculous.

It’s true that we do use they/their in the singular but it is generally where we don’t know the sex of the person.

Absurd. It's hard enough to follow threads on here about they / them / their or chuck there into the mix too, never mind a maths paper ffs.

GSCE maths is not an option (SEN/Alternate curriculums aside).

So sure you understand that some students may be only just be capable of GSCE maths but the world expects them to at least get a 4. And not getting a 4 because of fucked around woke language is not fair. It is an unnecessary barrier. Keep it simple stupid. Measure their English in their English exams.

Yes I teach pupils who would be really confused by this too. Some of them are bright, but have language difficulties - they can struggle with words like 'each' etc already, and frequently get questions wrong because they don't realise what is being referred to. (E.g., a question one girl was trying today had two types of phones being sold, so many of each type, and a profit was listed for the sale of each phone, type A as this, type B as that, and the student had to find the total profit. That was already too confusing for her - did 'each' mean each single phone sale, or each type of phone? etc. To an adult versed in maths problems and in how profits work and likely values, it was probably obvious. To a struggling dyslexic maths student - not at all.). To mix in complications like whether 'they' means one person or two would just add unnecessary confusion, just like complex names do. And there's no need for it.

I hope someone complains to the exam board, and this would be a real disadvantage for language-impaired students who already struggle with the language aspect of maths exams. Understanding language as it relates to maths is an important skills and need to be practised, absolutely. But no need to add unnecessary complications to it.

OP maybe put this in one of the Education sections to see if this a live issues that teachers already raise with exam boards. Would the exam centre where you scribe raise it. Maybe it would add weight to have someone “neutral” like a scribe (who has no interest in the school/schools in general getting better grades).

You are expected to have a certain level of English to be able to access certain exams, I imagine GCSE maths is one of these?

Is not like a student who has French or Mandarin as a first language could request the paper in their first language as a reasonable adjustment is it?

Even an adult may stumble over those sentences, it’s not how we are used to reading about people, so it’s a terrible idea. Terrible for people with poorer language skills, with dyslexia, with English as a second language.

”Inclusive” though, apparently for some undefined angry group.

You clearly have no knowledge of SEN or LD.

This is ridiculously confusing for a maths exam where exact calculations are everything and it will be the borderline kids and those that struggle who will suffer for it. Plain language is important.

For any 14 or 15 year who isn't already aware of this usage (and there really can't be many of them left) it is a 2 minute explanation of how this might be used and it would have come up in preparation for exams and practice papers.

I am sure 100 years ago people were horrified when maths questions were set in exams that depicted female as well as make characters, and I am sure people were horrified 50/60 years ago when names that were not typically British were used for characters in maths questions ..

Thanks goodness times move on, eh.