A study carried out by Cambridge Assessment, revealed surprising results about the common perception that dyslexic students are disadvantaged by certain features of conventional exam papers, such as font use and text spacing.

The research, carried out by Cambridge Assessment - Europe's largest assessment agency - which will be presented to the international conference of the Association of Language Testers in Europe this week, used a group of students identified as dyslexic, and a matched control group.

Questions used in the study were taken from a GCSE science paper.

That paper used a variety of material in the forms of writing, diagrams and tables and different versions of the paper were developed to explore the effects of features of exam questions such as font and layout. Students’ test performance was measured and a group of students were interviewed afterwards.

Results showed that while dyslexic students benefited from some techniques that make text clearer, the benefit was not significantly greater than for the control group of students that did not have dyslexia. However, there were some surprising results including:

The report concluded that results: ‘emphasised the already accepted importance of ensuring that information provided is clear, well spaced and clearly labelled’, but noted that with regard to dyslexic students, ‘some anecdotal views on good practice were not confirmed by the empirical data (e.g. the effect of Arial font, the effect of presenting materials on an insert sheet rather than the back page).’

Researchers also concluded that students preferred some elements of good practice even though they did not affect scores and that these elements might have ‘benefits in terms of reducing student anxiety.’


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