Official Statistics

Access arrangements for GCSE, AS and A Level: 2019 to 2020 academic year

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

From:
Ofqual
Published
17 December 2020

This publication was withdrawn on

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

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

Documents

Access Arrangements for GCSE AS and A level: 2019 to 2020 academic year

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Background information: Access Arrangements for GCSE AS and A level, 2019 to 2020 academic year

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Ref: Ofqual/20/6728

ODS, 17 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Pre-release access list: Access Arrangements for GCSE, AS and A level, 2019 to 2020 academic year

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Details

The main trends in access arrangements for GCSE, AS and A Level for the 2019/20 academic year in England were:

  1. There were 460,750 approved access arrangements, up 13.9% on 2018/19. Please note that more than one type of access arrangement can be granted per candidate. We are not aware of the reasons for this magnitude of increase in the number of access arrangement applications this academic year and are working with exam boards to understand any potential reasons.

  2. 5,375 centres (91.1% of all centres) had approved access arrangements for one or more of their candidates this year, a similar percentage to last year.

  3. 25% extra time arrangements made up 64.6% of all approved arrangements in 2019/20, compared to 63.4% in 2018/19.

User feedback

We welcome your feedback on our publications. Should you have any comments on this statistical release and how to improve it to meet your needs please contact us at data.analytics@ofqual.gov.uk.

Updates to this page

Published 17 December 2020

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