*However, if it is a competence that is being assessed in the qualification the student cannot opt out of these questions. Well they can, but they will lose marks. Maths qualifications may have a remit of preparing for real world scenarios, and they often do situate problems in social contexts.
If there are massive language difficulties teacher or parents might make the decision that a different type of maths qualification is appropriate for them, one where they can more readily demonstrate their competence in their areas of strengths.
However for most students this is an area that can be addressed with appropriate preparation and reasonable adjustments in the timed examinations themselves.
If a teacher or apparent anticipates that a student might face difficulties with pronouns for whatever reason the right way forward is to spend more time preparing for questions so that they are in a strong position to tackle them on the day.*
This is ridiculous. LIke teachers don't already spend hours of time working on the language aspects of maths questions with such pupils - actual language disabilities are not so easily solved, or we wouldn't have Speech and Language therapists working for years with such pupils on things like pronouns, tense, word order, etc.
Many pupils with subtle language disabilities don't understand that they've misunderstood the question - it's all just part of "I can't do maths" for some of them, when actually there are some aspects of maths they can do OK at. They may not be the strongest maths candidate, but they can do enough to maybe get a grade 4, if they're asked clear questions. Yes, this can included worded questions, real-life situations etc, as long as they're worded properly. It's an area teachers already spend much time going over and working on, to help as much as they can.
even the more basic functional maths skills tests have worded scenarios (in fact, sometimes more than GCSE) - even year 6 SATS have a couple of papers on this. So it's not like you can just say 'oh enter them in something that doesn't have lanugage in if they're not up to the task'. That really demonstrates an ignorance of the types of language disorders there are and how they can affect understanding.
For many teachers, it won't be obvious what the problems are that the child is experiencing - it can take careful analysis by speech and language experts to work that out, and then to help address it. Teachers might just realise that a child is not multiplying something that the should be , and think that the child doesn't understand multiplication or when to do it, and might concentrate efforts on clues to that - when actually, the child has misunderstood the situation described, and hadn't realised that a certain value applied to each person, but thought it was for the group, for example. It's not like they can just tell students that pronouns could refer to anyone so be prepared for that. The students themselves don't recognise where they're going wrong, let alone what might be causing it.
These may not even be massive language difficulties, but really subtle ones that can have quite big effects, particularly if people don't understand where they are coming from. Something as simple as not recognising something is a question vs a statement, for example, from mixing up 'is this' or 'this is', can have huge effects. Missing off the 's' at the end of a word when processing it, and not realising there is more than one thing, same sort of problem. Imagining that there must be other people (or something else unspecified like a company where you might use 'they') involved in a problem because of the word 'they' is similar. All kinds of subtle details. The exam boards don't always realise at first how something can be misinterpreted either - luckily they do learn from some of these things being pointed out to them, and there are efforts being made to write in clearer English. Other teachers/parents/adults don't always understand how there could be any other way to interpret a sentence until it's explained what the child thought - sometimes it is an ambiguous sentence that could actually be interpreted two ways, other times it's the child mistake for mixing up words ,leaving out punctuation, not realising which parts of the sentence went together etc, and it's not how a 'normal' language processor would interpret it, but a common misunderstanding. And even those need to be avoided on a test that is about maths - even when it's about applying maths to real-world situations.
Also yes to the point about expecting the language to be formal. Children are taught that questions are worded carefully, and that in things like probability problems, you need to read exactly what is written, and not necessarily what you might assume based on how we talk in normal life. Another example might be the word 'similar' - it has a very specific meaning in maths, which is not the same as in normal life, where it means 'kind of the same'.
Not having a language disability is not a prerequisite or a competence required for doing a maths test. Yes, there are aspects of maths where you have to understand language and worded problems and situations, absolutely, and it's vital to test these. But you can still test them and be sensitive to the needs to pupils with language difficulties.
It's nothing to do with objecting to people using they/them/their pronouns in real life - my feelings on that are unrelated to them being used in a maths exam. I hadn't even realised this topic was in FWR to start with. I am not trying to erase the identity of anyone - there are in fact many ways to word a problem in a gender neutral way if that's what you want to do, and I gave examples above. it's this insistence on the fact that they/them pronouns can't be confusing to anyone who takes maths at this level that I object to, or that their problems with pronouns or language comprehension generally should just be put right with a bit of practice in advance.