Reasonable Adjustments Policy

Published 29/07/2024

1. Introduction

The College is committed to ensuring that all candidates have equal opportunity to demonstrate their ability in College and Faculty examinations. The College will make reasonable adjustments to examination arrangements as appropriate for individual disabled candidates.

This document aims to set out the reasonable adjustments policy, the timeline, booking process, and supportive evidence required to request reasonable adjustments. Guidance for disability assessors and examples of reasonable adjustments are also provided.

The reasonable adjustments policy takes into account the guidelines set out by the following statutory organisations:

  1. Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC)’ ‘Reasonable Adjustments for Candidates with Disabilities in High Stakes Assessments’ document (July 2017), which was produced following collaboration with medical royal colleges. This policy also takes account of the AoMRC document ‘Managing access arrangements for candidates requesting adjustments in high stakes assessment (May 2018).
  1. The General Medical Council (GMC) ‘Welcome and valued: Supporting disabled learners in medical education and training’ document, Chapter 1: ‘Health and disability in medicine’ and Chapter 3: ‘What is expected of medical education organisations and employers?’
  1. The Equality and Human Rights commission (EHRC) technical guidance document to the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 that commenced on 1 October 2010, ‘Equality Act 2010. Technical guidance on Further and Higher Education’. For education providers, the document sets out the requirements of the Act and provides an authoritative, comprehensive, and technical guide to the letter of the law (2015).

This policy applies to all examination components of College and Faculty examinations. Reasonable adjustments are component-specific therefore a separate application must be made for each component and reasonable adjustments approved for one component cannot be transferred to another.