Official Statistics

Access Arrangements for GCSE and A Level: 2014/15 Academic Year

Access arrangements allow skills and knowledge to be demonstrated by candidates with disabilities, temporary illnesses or special educational needs.

• From: Ofqual
• Published: 3 November 2015

This publication was withdrawn on 17 July 2025

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 Shedding new light on access arrangements data

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 at Modified papers for GCSE, AS and A level: 2014 to 2024.

Applies to England, Northern Ireland and Wales

Documents

Access Arrangements for GCSE and A Level: 2014/15 Academic Year

Ref: Ofqual/15/5781

PDF, 1.27 MB, 26 pages

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Tables : Access Arrangements for GCSE and A Level:2014/15 Academic Year

ODS, 26.1 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Pre-release access list

MS Word Document, 12.5 KB

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

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If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email publications@ofqual.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

The key findings for this release are:

1. There were 284,300 requests for access arrangements, up 5% on 2013/14.
2. These requests were for 173,850 candidates, up 3% on 2013/14 with the total number of candidates being stable between 2013/2014 and 2014/2015.
3. There were 255,850 requests approved, up 3% on 2013/14.
4. There were 138,550 approved requests for the most frequently granted access arrangement of 25% extra time, a 5% increase compared with 2013/14.
5. The number of approved requests for modified papers has increased by 26% on 2013/14 , from 28,750 to 36,150.
6. There were 10,150 approved requests for non-interactive electronic question papers (a type of modified paper introduced from summer 2014), an increase of 111% on 2013/14.

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Published 3 November 2015