Access Arrangements Without a School: How the Evidence Works

They are available to you

Access arrangements — additional time, a separate room, a reader, a scribe, assistive technology, modified papers and others — are available to private candidates as well as to students at school. What differs is not eligibility but evidence. The system was designed around candidates who have been at an institution for years, and much of what it asks for is generated naturally in that setting. A private candidate has to assemble it deliberately. The single most important thing to know is that this runs on its own timetable, separate from and generally earlier than exam entry. Starting it late is the most common reason candidates end up sitting without arrangements they were entitled to.

What normal way of working means

Arrangements are not granted on a diagnosis alone. The governing principle is that they must reflect the candidate's normal way of working — the support they ordinarily use when studying and being assessed. For a school candidate that is demonstrated by years of classroom practice. For a private candidate it has to be demonstrated some other way: through a tutor or centre where the student has studied and been assessed, through documented use of the same support in mock assessments, or through a record from a previous school. This is why enrolling somewhere that assesses you formally has a second benefit beyond teaching. It generates exactly the record the arrangements process asks for.

Arrangements are not granted on a diagnosis alone. They must reflect how you normally work — which means the evidence has to exist before you apply.

The assessment and the application

Where a learning difficulty is the basis, an assessment by a suitably qualified assessor is normally required, and the outcome is recorded on a standard form used across all awarding bodies. Medical conditions are evidenced differently, usually through documentation from a relevant professional. The centre entering you makes the application to the awarding body. You cannot apply yourself, in the same way you cannot enter yourself for the exam. This means the centre has to be involved early, and it has to be a centre willing to do this work for a private candidate — which not all are. Ask about it at the first conversation rather than after you have paid an entry fee.

Practical points that catch people out

Start earlier than you think. The evidence, the assessment and the application all take time, and the deadlines for applying sit well before the exams. If you had arrangements at school, do not assume they transfer automatically. Get hold of the documentation from your previous school and give it to your new centre — it is far easier than reconstructing the case from nothing. Ask what it costs. Some centres charge an administration fee for arrangements; at London Maths and Science College it is one hundred and twenty five pounds, charged once per candidate per series regardless of how many subjects you take. Few centres publish this figure at all, so ask for it in writing before you commit.