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?

"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."

You are wrong. I taught many students who were excellent at maths but had English as a second (or third) language and would struggle if the context of the question was unusual / unexpected.

..as well as male characters..

You are being offensively ignorant about children with SEN @suggestionsplease1. As the parent of a child who would really find this very difficult to parse and who would waste a lot of time trying to figure out if he'd missed mention of a second person, I would really appreciate if if you'd take your ignorance elsewhere.

But all students are expected to have the level of English required to access the paper.

Their school has failed them if they not prepared them in this respect .

I just asked dd and her friend (staying with us at the moment) about the use of pronouns in the exam, after looking at me like I had two heads, they declared they hadn't even noticed and that they just looked for the numbers to work out the question / answer.

And they are really not into the gender woo, and maths is not their finest subject.

I'm aware though that my anecdote won't be relevant.

I advise in the area of SEN thanks.

There is no conflict here.

Difficult names ARE a problem, actually, not just 50 or 60 years ago, but now. It doesn't matter whether they're foreign or not; they need to be simple to sound out, for those pupils who have language disabilities.

And no, a 2-minute explanation about 'they' wouldn't help, because sometimes it does mean two people, and sometimes one. That's exactly the sort of problem that people with DLDs find difficult to cope with - following the syntax of a sentence to work out who is who, what pronouns refer to, how to understand the order of the words (e.g., the difference between 'three groups' and 'groups of three') etc. And it's already hard enough for them in maths!

Ofqual consulting on accessible language in exams:
www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/ofqual-consult-using-simpler-language-exams
I know there has been discussion about questions with "middle class bias" - but struggling to find an article that isn't behind a paywall.

Not all schools fell for the stonewall clap trap so wouldn't have covered all the fashionable pronouns being forced upon us.

Schools can't just 'prepare them to have the level of English needed to access the exam' - that's exactly the problem that students with DLD have! Eleven years of schooling haven't managed to eradicate it - so how would their maths teachers be able to do so in just a few minutes? It's a serious disability, and a proportion of students in most schools will have it - possibly more so in some of the lower maths tiers where they are very much trying to pass the exam, and something like this could make a difference as to whether that happens or not.

Information copied from the Ofqual consultation suggests the following groups of students can be disadvantaged if information in questions is not clear:

"deaf or Deaf Learners (those whose first language is English and those whose first language is British Sign Language), whose English language skills might develop at a later age because of lack of exposure to English in their earlier years
blind or visually impaired Learners who, for example, might have to spend disproportionate time and effort interpreting an unclear visual image, even where the image has been modified for them as a Reasonable Adjustment. This could include Learners with colour vision deficiency.
some Learners on the autism spectrum. Their literal understanding of language could make it difficult for them to respond to a task that is unnecessarily ambiguous or unclear. They might also be distracted by a needless image used in a task
some Learners with learning difficulties, including those with dyslexia. They might find it more difficult to access an exam paper in particular fonts, or that has uneven spaces between words, or uses unnecessarily complex sentence structures
Learners who are not familiar with the context of a task or concepts to which a task refers. This is only where the context or concept is not part of the assessment construct, but where familiarity might make it easier for a Learner to perform well in the task. For example, tasks that assume familiarity with certain cultural, family or travel experiences or with uncommon household objects
Learners whose first language is not English, who might be less familiar with colloquialisms, humour or customs included in a task or in stimulus materials"

95% of the population use "they/them" only for plural, or in the singular where the person is unnamed. Kai is not unnamed, because we know that Kai is called "Kai". Odds are that Kai is male and thus "he/him", though on the rare chance that Kai is female, it wouldn't be much of a problem to use "she/her". The two things that Kai is certainly not are plural, or unnamed.

Yes but there is no need to add any additional confusion such as issues of pronouns. English is my first language and it still took me a few extra seconds to work out that the person setting the exam had picked a not typically British name but thought it was a boy’s name when it a girl. That’s for someone that went to get A in GCSE English. That was a practice. As it happens I have a physical disability as well and needed all the time I could get to make sure graphs were as accurate as possible.

if a maths exams can be made clearer why not?

And for students with language disabilities, asking them whether they noticed the pronouns or were confused with them probably won't elicit much information. Part of the problem is that they don't know that they are misinterpreting the questions at the time, and sometimes don't really get why it was wrong even afterwards. So they often think that they've read and understood it totally normally, and it can take quite a lot of analysis to work out how they actually interpreted it and why. In some cases, the language difficulties are combined with dyscalculia or other difficulties, so they are struggling to make sense of the maths as well, and trying their hardest to get things right - but they don't have some of the other clues that people who are good at maths and know what kind of things a problem would be testing and how to fall back on. These are the sorts of children that might find this needlessly confusing. They often don't read accurantely - mixing up small words, leaving words out, changing the order around (reading 'this is...' instead of 'is this...', for example), all which already play havoc with the understanding of a word problem type question. There's no need to add confusion with singular/plural to that, especially when there are plenty of people who do go by she or he!

Nope. Some of the students I scribe for have very basic levels of English, whether it’s due to lds, English as a secondary language, and yes some of them just don’t grasp language complexity. And this is maths, students shouldn’t have to grapple with another layer of difficulty.
when the dust settles, (it is manic atm) I’m going to approach the senco and exam manager about a formal complaint.

When I took O levels, I was at an international
School overseas in a country that had different norms to the UK. I don't live there now but the pronoun thing would be confusing for a country where you can't identify as non binary.

Also you can't assume that every candidate is on social media and aware of non binary people. Most UK teens might know about non/binary pronouns because of the internet but it is unreasonable to assume all will. I have teenagers and only one has met a real life binary person- the other only knows about pronouns because of social media.

I advise in the area of SEN thanks.

Then you should have some fucking awareness and empathy.

@suggestionsplease1 It's the ambiguity that may be created using they, their instead of he, she that causes problems. They/their is used to indicate the plural in the majority of day to day usage.

@suggestionsplease1 It's the ambiguity that may be created using they, their instead of he, she that causes problems. They/their is used to indicate the plural in the majority of day to day usage.

How old are you out of interest?

I am sure of I took a maths paper to my 90 year old aunt she would balk at the - 'unusual & foreign-to-her' names that are used in it. She would turn to me and say "Why is this necessary, why don't they just keep the language simple so everybody can understand it more easily? If a maths exam could be made clearer why isn't it? It's not a test of my English for heaven's sake!

Her teenage grandchildren who are taking the papers will of course just roll their eyes, because there is nothing unusual for them. The language they see reflects their lived experience, and even if it doesn't reflect their immediate lived experience they are of the age where they know what is inferred. I had names I had never seen in my maths papers. Funnily enough enough I didn't get any calculations wrong because of that.

And I can't imagine for one second questions have been set in such a way where the number of characters was in question for the correct calculation of an answer.

You are just being rude now.
You should probably stop.

There is nothing rude about expecting a school to adequately prepare their students for the examinations they have decided to enter them into based on their abilities.

If you feel you have a child that has been failed in this respect I would complain to your school that they haven't done the groundwork needed.

I don’t agree. A school pretending that normal people refer to a person of known sex as “they” has though.

I think you'll find that the 'normal' (your word) people presently undertaking GCSEs have no difficult whatsoever with this concept.

I am sure of I took a maths paper to my 90 year old aunt she would balk at the - 'unusual & foreign-to-her' names that are used in it.

If you think that is the issue then - as per usual - you have missed the point, or are dishonestly pretending that you have.

Can I please ask people to think about whether it's worth engaging with someone who pops up to derail about irrelevant issues?

OP, I know plenty of people who would be thrown by using 'they' to refer to one person enough that they would be less sure what the question was.