Students are set to benefit from proposed Ofqual guidance on how to make exams and other assessments accessible and user-friendly for all.

We want to hear views from all interested parties – including students and those who represent them – through a consultation on our draft guidance, published today.

The proposed updated guidance will support awarding organisations to design and develop assessments that meet our rules on accessibility.

Students with particular backgrounds, needs and disabilities are among those who stand to gain.

Ofqual Chief Regulator Dr Jo Saxton said: “The best interests of students are the compass that guides us.

“We regulate so that assessments enable every student to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do – without unnecessary barriers. It is crucial that assessments are as accessible as possible for all students.”

The draft guidance includes how to:

• use accessible, clear and plain language in producing assessments to avoid any unfair disadvantage

• design and develop accessible layout

• use source material, context, images and colour in ways that maximise accessibility

• design and develop assessments to meet reasonable adjustments required by disabled students including those using assistive technology

Accessibility is essential as we meet our statutory objectives, including to secure qualification and assessment standards.

The guidance will help awarding organisations design assessments which comply with our General Conditions of Recognition on accessibility.

We will not make changes to the Conditions themselves, so obligations on awarding organisations will stay the same.

The consultation opens today and will run for 12 weeks, ending on January 24 at 23.45. We expect to announce the outcome in spring 2022.

The call comes as the government announced today (Monday 1 November) it would back a new five-year review to monitor women’s representation in the upper rungs of FTSE companies, namely The FTSE Women Leaders Review, and encourage firms to open up opportunities to everyone.

Research has found that having diversity at the top can improve companies’ profitability, and government is eager to ensure everyone, whatever their background, has equal opportunity to succeed and achieve on merit to make the most of talent across the UK.

Business Minister Paul Scully said:

UK business has taken great strides when it comes to gender diversity at board level, underlining the success of the government’s voluntary approach.

Companies shouldn’t take their foot off the gas. Evidence shows that more diverse businesses are more successful businesses – the case is too strong to ignore.

To date, the government’s actions have proven immensely successful in encouraging companies – without the use of quotas – to improve the gender balance on their boards, through fair recruitment on the basis of merit.

Earlier this year the final report of the government-backed Hampton Alexander Review, which ran from 2015 to 2020, found that its main target had been more than met, with over a third (34.3%) of FTSE350 board positions held by women.

This marked a huge increase of 50% over 5 years. The numbers of ‘one and done’ boards – with only one woman member – dwindled from 116 in 2015 to just 16 earlier this year.

Today, the new FTSE Women Leaders Review opened its online portal for FTSE companies to submit their gender diversity data. New leadership is currently being appointed to steer the review, and take forward new targets over the coming years.

1. Women on Boards Reported numbers for Women on Boards of FTSE 350 companies, as at 11 January 2021 show:
   (Source – BoardEx) • FTSE 100 at 36.2% • FTSE 250 at 33.2% • FTSE 350 at 34.3%

2. Women in Leadership Reported numbers for Women in leadership roles of FTSE 350 companies, as at 31 October 2020 show: (Source – Hampton-Alexander Review Portal) • FTSE 100 at 30.6% • FTSE 250 at 28.5% • FTSE 350 at 29.4%

3. Women in Leadership is defined as the Executive Committee & the Direct Reports to the Executive Committee on a combined basis.

4. The FTSE Women Leaders Review Portal is open for all FTSE 350 companies to submit their Women in Leadership gender data from Monday 1 November until Tuesday 30 November 2021. The next annual report will be published in February 2022.

5. Further information is available at https://ftsewomenleaders.com.

The social media campaign calls upon healthcare professionals, national immunisation programme staff, as well as patients, their carers and families, to report suspected side effects from medicines or vaccines using the Yellow Card scheme. This #MedSafetyWeek is the sixth annual awareness week involving medicine regulators from over 60 countries. It focuses on the importance of reporting suspected side effects following vaccination and the MHRA is taking part to further encourage everyone to report.

Vaccines are the best way to protect individuals against infectious diseases and have already saved millions of lives. Like all medicines, side effects can happen. Reporting suspected side effects to the Yellow Card scheme helps the MHRA to identify new side effects and gain more information about known effects.

Every report counts, so the advice to everyone is to report any suspected side effect to medicines, vaccines or medical devices as soon as possible. You can show support during #MedSafetyWeek by sharing the MHRA’s posts on social media and discussing with colleagues, friends and family the importance of reporting suspected side effects to the Yellow Card scheme. Healthcare professionals prescribing, dispensing or administering medicines or vaccines are encouraged to discuss side effects with their patients and to be vigilant for new or rare suspected side effects.

Mick Foy, Head of Pharmacovigilance Strategy at the MHRA, says:

The most important part of our work is making sure the vaccines and medicines you and your family take are effective and acceptably safe. This campaign comes at a crucial time when millions of people in the UK are vaccinated against COVID-19 but is equally applicable to all vaccines and medicines.

Yellow Card scheme reports play a key role in helping the MHRA monitor the safe use of all medicines and vaccines to protect public health through effective regulation.

Reporting suspected side effects using the Yellow Card scheme helps ensure vaccines, medicines and medical devices continue to be used in the best way and adds to the known safety information about healthcare products.

Notes to Editor

1. The MHRA, which runs the Yellow Card scheme, is responsible for protecting and improving the health of millions of people every day through the effective regulation of all medicines, vaccines and medical devices in the UK by ensuring they work and are acceptably safe. All our work is underpinned by robust and fact-based judgements to ensure that the benefits justify any risks.

2. Anyone can use the Yellow Card scheme to report suspected side effects of medicines and vaccines, incidents involving medical devices, defective, fake medical products and safety concerns for e-cigarettes or their refill containers (e-liquids). The Yellow Card scheme is an early warning system for detecting patient safety issues and the scheme has identified many new safety issues that were unknown before being reported via a Yellow Card report.

3. Reports can be made on the Yellow Card scheme website, via the app available from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, via freephone (0800 731 6789, 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday) or by reporting an issue to their healthcare team who can file a report on their behalf. Yellow Card reporting for suspected side effects can also be made from some clinical IT systems for healthcare professionals (EMIS, SystmOne, Vision, MiDatabank and Ulysses).

4. The MHRA is providing a dedicated Coronavirus Yellow Card reporting site to report suspected side effects to medicines, vaccines, medical device and test kit incidents used in coronavirus testing and treatment.

5. Patients are advised to contact a healthcare professional if they are worried about their health.

6. National medicines regulatory authorities from 63 countries across the globe and their stakeholders will be taking part in this international campaign led by Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring. The campaign is supported by members of the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) and the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA). The #MedSafetyWeek 2021 project team consists of representatives from the following organisations working collaboratively: Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (UK) as co-lead, Egypt Chapter of the International Society of Pharmacovigilance (ISoP Egypt), the Health Products Regulatory Authority (Ireland) and the Food and Drugs Authority (Ghana).