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?

"John, Sean and Padma are sharing out some sweets. John gets six, Sean gets four. Padma's share equals a fifth of the total. How much do they get?"

Does the examiner want to know how much Padma got, or how much all three of them got in total? @suggestionsplease1

Padma's been short-changed there! 2.5 sweets - complain to the manufacturer about the defective one. Also, send her on assertiveness training so she gets her full share next time, unless she confirms she actively didn't want more.

<misses point of thread>

I have noticed over the past few years that I don't feel comfortable repeatedly delivering such questions when there are so many students to who don't see themselves as boy or girl.

@MissPeregrinesHome I don't see myself as an emperor penguin (for some reason), but I've never had difficulty answering a question about how many fish one has caught. It's a maths question, it doesn't have to be relatable, it just has to be clearly understood.

Can you not just reuse the name - Robyn pays £21 for the jacket.

The point of maths exams isn't to teach about gender issues it's to test maths. This way you are not offending anyone but are also clear it is one person you are talking about.

I meant to write a third but in my defence I got up for work at 4am this morning.

I said I have students who don't see themselves as boy or girl. Which I think is acceptable.

But they are either boys or girls. I don't have a problem with children or people requesting gender neutral language but it shouldn't be at the expense of understanding. And, for those of us who were brought up with the student always being "he", we know that it's hard to imagine yourself in situations where the male default is always used. It feels like we have gone full circle and the progressives are trying to make women and girls invisible again.

I hope I didn't come across as being critical! I was just so pleased with myself for finally working it out I couldn't resist showing off. If I'd got up at 4am for work I'd be so knackered I'd be incapable of any rational thought.

From the OP:
‘So there was they their, he him and she her. A few of my fellow scribes 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).’

That’s not ‘no possible confusion’.

I have a DD who would be confused by mixing pronouns in maths questions. She has dyslexia and various processing issues. Any unnecessary confusion would be yet one more thing to worry her.

Just because a few pupils have gender issues, doesn't mean that gender confusion needs to be brought into GCSE exams.

So now even non-existent humans in imagined situations need to have neutral pronouns, even if it confuses people so much that you are not testing maths any more, you are testing adherence to ideology.

And it's not a cult?

Maths exams are there to test knowledge of maths, not gender ideology. In the current climate of confusion about pronouns, if I had to set an exam, I'd be using pronouns as little as possible. It is clunky to repeat names but it's clear.

Or just use he and him, she and her...the imaginary person will not flounce out of the exam paper if they have a sexed pronoun to describe themselves [as they don't actually exist].

If a question has been phrased so that there is legitimate confusion over correct calculations of course this should be addressed.

As I have said repeatedly, it is perfectly possible to phrase questions so that this is not the case.

Not read the full thread but I have noticed this ideology in exam papers too. There was a GCSE maths question about ratio with red and blue sweets or something. Usually they would be shared between boys and girls in the question. It's now children and adults. This slightly changes the feeling / context of the question so is off-putting and jarring.

I have also seen a BTEC Heath & Social question with a scenario about a transgender person. It was written with the assumption of a belief that people can change sex.

Blimey the very fact that we now have kids who "don't see themselves as a boy ir a girl" shows just how completely batshit this gender stuff is. I could "see myself" as a blonde 6ft supermodel but I wouldn't get offended if a model agency refused to employ me!! When I worked in a mental health setting there was a patient who thought he was Jesus. Strangely enough it wasn't best practice to worship at his feet or nail him to a cross.

I am horrified by the damage that is being done to naive and impressionable teenagers with all this crap and dismayed by the fact that adults who are well aware that biological sex is a fact rather than an idea are enabling it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 👍

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.

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.

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.

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.

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