The SENCo sets them from the pupil’s ‘normal way of working’ in class and mocks, evidenced before the exam and applied for through JCQ Access Arrangements Online (2025/26). No diagnosis or EHCP is needed.
Access arrangements are how your centre delivers the awarding body’s duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates (Equality Act 2010, s.96). The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) sets one governing principle: an arrangement must reflect the support a pupil already uses day to day, not something introduced for the exam. Your SENCo (the school’s special educational needs coordinator) is empowered at centre level to decide what is appropriate and reasonable.
The four steps
- Identify the need from classroom history. The SENCo picks up on what a pupil routinely needs, from teaching staff, learning support and internal-assessment records. Need can be evidenced for a pupil on SEN Support with no formal diagnosis and no EHCP.
- Record the normal way of working on Form 8, Part 1. Form 8 is JCQ’s record of a pupil’s learning difficulties. Under the 2025/26 rules, Part 1 must already carry teacher feedback and evidence of the normal way of working, such as timed mock or internal-assessment results, before any specialist assessment. A skeleton Part 1 is no longer accepted.
- Get a qualified assessment where the arrangement needs one. Arrangements such as 25% extra time, a reader or a scribe require a qualified specialist assessor to complete Part 2 of Form 8. For 25% extra time, Part 2 must show at least two below-average standardised scores of 84 or less across two different areas of speed of working (or one of 84 or less plus one in the 85–89 range).
- Apply through Access Arrangements Online (AAO). Where an arrangement needs awarding-body approval, the exams officer submits it on JCQ’s AAO system. The arrangement must be approved before the exam or assessment, never granted retrospectively.
Timing and the 2025/26 changes
Work to the exam timetable backwards: the evidence has to be in place before the assessment, and approval has to be in place before the paper is sat. From the March 2026 update, the candidate personal data consent form and the data-protection confirmation form have been withdrawn; AAO applications are now processed under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, so you no longer collect those signatures. If a third-party guide tells you to, it is citing a superseded edition.
If an application is queried or refused
If JCQ queries or refuses an application, the usual gap is in the evidence, not the pupil’s need. Strengthen Part 1 with fuller normal-way-of-working evidence and resubmit. Check the current edition of the JCQ AARA regulations for the arrangement you are applying for, and confirm your specialist assessor holds the qualification JCQ requires.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.