Lance the Boyle of English exam papers that baffle learners

“Windows and mirrors” are powerful metaphors in education: windows to other worlds, mirrors to see ourselves. But too often, functional skills English exams present windows that are rusted shut – and mirrors that reflect no one our learners recognise.

These papers frequently fail to assess what they claim: writing, comprehension and analytical thinking. Instead, they introduce cultural and cognitive barriers that many learners simply cannot overcome, no matter how well they’ve been taught.

There seems to be zero cultural awareness amongst topics in English functional skills exams. This hinders adults from overseas from expressing themselves with a fluency that comes with personal experiences and access to an inner sense of knowledge about all things great British.

Nor do they appear to be mindful of neurodivergent learners, for whom an over-reliance on imagining is disastrous.

Here are some real examples we’ve come across that illustrate the problem:

• For a Level 2 exam paper centred around the fictional “Northchester Music Festival”, learners were asked to interpret the line: “Once I’ve donned my glamorous festival outfit, I usually have a quick mooch around the attractions”. For many, this reads like satire. Fortunately, one thing our learners do not lack is a sense of humour – until the results come in. The list of learners this impacted is long and demoralising.
• Another paper featured a Daily Mail article titled “A bridge too far” – not about war or the film, but the card game bridge. We can only imagine the content of learners’ responses had they been asked to share their views.
• A more surreal scenario involved managing a vegan pizza café, complete with invented place names and fake pizza flavours. For neurodivergent learners, particularly those with autism, this was an overwhelming exercise in forced imagination, not functional writing. Once again, precious time would have been wasted as they tried to conjure up what being a café manager entails. And why only vegan options? What would non-vegan customers eat? They would be left staring into space trying to visualise it all!
• A writing task about a day at a theme park – “Would you recommend it and why?” – seems harmless, unless you’ve never been. For migrant learners, carers or parents juggling multiple roles, the assumption of this shared experience is exclusionary.
  
  

These examples show how learners are being set up to fail not for lack of skill, but because the contexts assume shared cultural experiences they don’t have.

Just last week, a class consisting of nine different nationalities of various ages (inclusion and diversity on point) tackled a writing task asking them to describe their two favourite performers.

They were prepped with an opinion piece about TV talent shows. They warmed up watching a clip of Susan Boyles’ I Dreamed a Dream audition on Britain’s Got Talent, and the text attempted to support them with a helpful list of musicians, magicians and comedians. Again, a sense of the absurd and a sense of humour were the best anxiety-defusing weapons.

“I’m not that person!” cried one learner, a mother of three whose childhood in Somalia and Saturday evenings with her family did not include Ant and Dec, Simon Cowell or Strictly. And as teachers, neither were ours – despite our UK origin.

We recognise the challenge.Writing papers that work for teenagers, grandparents, migrants, and neurodivergent learners is no easy task. But at present, these exams add more hurdles than necessary.

Inclusion is thriving in our classrooms, but not in the exam papers. Equity, diversity and inclusion must extend to assessment design too.

If we truly want adult learners to thrive, the exams must start reflecting that too.