Statistics: access arrangements for GCSE, AS and A level
Statistics on the number of access arrangements (including modified papers) granted for students in England.
Provide your feedback
We welcome your feedback on our publications. If you have any comments on these statistical releases, or how to improve them to meet your needs, please complete our short survey or email our statistics team.
Overview
Access arrangements are the provisions made for candidates, agreed before they take an assessment, to ensure that they can be validly assessed and are not unfairly disadvantaged due to a disability, temporary illness or injury or if their first language is not English. Access arrangements can be provided for any candidates taking exams or non-exam assessments who meet the eligibility criteria.
Access arrangements granted for disabled candidates are provided as ‘reasonable adjustments’.
For more information on access arrangements, see the background information document accompanying each release.
Withdrawal of statistics
In 2025, Ofqual analysed a more detailed access arrangements dataset that we had requested from exam boards. Our analysis highlighted that our previously published official statistics on access arrangements overstated the number of approved access arrangements in place for the exam cohort in each year. For more details, see this blog.
Using this new more detailed dataset, we are strengthening our methodologies for analysis and quality assurance and plan to publish revised figures in our 2025 release. We intend for this release to include the academic years between 2020 to 2021 and 2024 to 2025, for which we have the new data.
While we complete that work, we are withdrawing the previously published statistics because of the limitations we have identified through our analysis. This issue does not affect the figures relating to modified papers, which are based on a different data source and which are now available below.
Official statistics designation
These releases are designated as official statistics.
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
We will do our best to respond to any comments about how we meet these standards. If you have any remaining concerns, you are welcome to contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.
For related statistics, see our statistics at Ofqual page.
Collection
Updates to this page
-
Added page: Modified papers for GCSE, AS and A level: 2014 to 2024
-
First published.