Supporting deaf learners in assessment

When you’re working with deaf learners in the senior phase and supporting them in accessing our qualifications, we want to ensure that the broad spectrum of deafness is covered. Many deaf learners will use a variety of communication methods, such as BSL, Sign Supported English or spoken English.

Learners may also use different deaf-friendly assistive technology. For example, they may use hearing aids, and other assistive listening devices. We want to support an inclusive approach as deaf learners’ ability to access information can vary from room to room, space to space.

Assessing deaf learners

The information below is for anyone who’s involved in providing the arrangements for assessments for deaf learners and includes examples of good practice.

Good practice in assessing deaf learners (164 KB)

Guidance on using sign language in exams

Guidance and additional advice (with templates and checklists) for centres, interpreters and learners.

Using Sign in SQA Assessments (382 KB)

Please note the above information must be read alongside:

Assessment Arrangements Explained: Information for Centres.

Exemplar exam questions translated into BSL

Working with the Scottish Sensory Centre we have produced some exemplar questions from the 2014 National 5 examination questions in:

• Biology
• Chemistry
• History

British Sign Language Glossaries of Curriculum Terms

The glossary project is a project run by the Scottish Sensory Centre, it produces signed definitions, lab experiments and examples for terms commonly used in qualifications assessment. Teams of BSL linguists and subject specialists have created this resource by gathering any existing terms and creating new terms in BSL for those that do not.

If you use British Sign Language (BSL), the Contact Scotland BSL service has an online interpreter to help you communicate with us.

Find out about Contact Scotland BSL